IPsec: Security Architecture for IP Network

IPsec provides security services at the network layer by enabling a system to select required security protocols, determine the algorithm(s) to use for the service(s), and put in place any cryptographic keys required to provide the requested services. IPsec can be used to protect one or more "paths" between a pair of hosts, between a pair of security gateways, or between a security gateway and a host.

The set of security services that IPsec can provide includes access control, connectionless integrity, data origin authentication, rejection of replayed packets (a form of partial sequence integrity), confidentiality (encryption), and limited traffic flow confidentiality. Because these services are provided at the IP layer, they can be used by any higher layer protocol, e.g., TCP, UDP, ICMP, BGP, etc.

These objectives are met through the use of two traffic security protocols, the Authentication Header (AH) and the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP), and through the use of cryptographic key management procedures and protocols. The set of IPsec protocols employed in any context, and the ways in which they are employed, will be determined by the security and system requirements of users, applications, and/or sites/organizations.

When these mechanisms are correctly implemented and deployed, they ought not to adversely affect users, hosts, and other Internet components that do not employ these security mechanisms for protection of their traffic. These mechanisms also are designed to be algorithm-independent. This modularity permits selection of different sets of algorithms without affecting the other parts of the implementation. For example, different user communities may select different sets of algorithms (creating cliques) if required.

A standard set of default algorithms is specified to facilitate interoperability in the global Internet. The use of these algorithms, in conjunction with IPsec traffic protection and key management protocols, is intended to permit system and application developers to deploy high quality, Internet layer, cryptographic security technology.

Protocol Structure - IPsec: Security Architecture for IP Network

IPsec Architecture included many protocols and algorithms. The relationship of these protocols are displayed as follows:

The details of each protocol will be presented in separate documents.

Related Protocols
ESP , AH, IKE , ISKAMP , DES, AES, DOI, HMAC, HMAC-MD5, HMAC-SHA, PKI, IP , IPv6 , ICMP