Re:Ask HN: Is it better to centralize authentication at a se...
by EGreg on Friday April 22, 2016 @09:48AM
(#11549114)
I am not sure about the scholarly works... the main ideas are:
In a distributed environment, the concept of "after" changes from a linear one to a tree one. The idea that a client can't post "after" you revoked their permission needs to be revised.
If you want to maintain linear order of messages, each node in the tree has to be owned by someone. So for example I own my own comment and if someone responds to my comment I have to accept it and broadcast in what order that happened.
But that doesn't require the authentication to be centralized, nor the publishing. However, there is a central authority for each node in a tree.
In addition, you now have to solve the byzantine generals problem so that the servers don't say different things to different people. To be honest this same problem exists with a centralized authority, and distributed servers can be held to account better, because they don't have a monopoly.
In a distributed environment, the concept of "after" changes from a linear one to a tree one. The idea that a client can't post "after" you revoked their permission needs to be revised.
If you want to maintain linear order of messages, each node in the tree has to be owned by someone. So for example I own my own comment and if someone responds to my comment I have to accept it and broadcast in what order that happened.
But that doesn't require the authentication to be centralized, nor the publishing. However, there is a central authority for each node in a tree.
In addition, you now have to solve the byzantine generals problem so that the servers don't say different things to different people. To be honest this same problem exists with a centralized authority, and distributed servers can be held to account better, because they don't have a monopoly.