TABLE OF CONTENTS The Internet started as a small research network in which all users were assumed innocent participants of open communications of that network. With that assumption, the Internet Protocol (IP) did not have any built-in security features as part of the protocol design initially. A few decades later, however, IP has been deployed worldwide and the Internet has become one of the most important communication media. As IP is becoming the main information exchange protocol, the demand to make the IP communication secure arises. IP Security (IPsec) is designed to protect the IP communication from entities with malicious intents.
IPsec was defined as an extension to the IPv4 specification, but IPsec was designed such that it is independent of the IP protocol versions. Currently, IPsec is widely deployed in IPv4 as a method to connect multiple remote sites for creating a single Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the Internet. In IPv6, supporting IPsec-related protocols is a mandatory requirement for any IPv6 node, which means all IPv6 nodes have IPsec enabled by default. This requirement will accelerate the deployment of IPsec not only for creating VPNs but also to encourage secure communications among IPv6 nodes.
IPsec is a set of mechanisms that adds authentication and encryption to the IP layer. IPv6 nodes must support the following specifications:
Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol as defined in [RFC2401]
IP Authentication Header (AH) as defined in [RFC2402]
IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) as defined in [RFC2406]
[RFC2401] describes the general architecture to...
