A multi-layer IPsec protocol

Abstract

IPsec [KA98c] is a suite of standard protocols that provides security services for Internet communications. It protects the entire IP datagram in an \\end-to-end" fashion; no intermediate network node in the public Internet can access or modify any information above the IP layer in an IPsec-protected packet. However, recent advances in internet technology introduce a rich new set of services and applications, like trac engineering, TCP performance enhancements, or transparent proxying and caching, all of which require intermediate network nodes to access a certain part of an IP datagram, usually the upper layer protocol information, to perform ow classication, constraint-based routing, or other customized processing. This is in direct con- ict with the IPsec mechanisms. In this research, we propose a multi-layer security protection scheme for IPsec, which uses a ner-grain access control to allow trusted intermediate routers to read and write selected portions of IP datagrams (usually...