Security Issues in Emerging High Speed Networks

There is a growing interest in the development of broadband services and networks for commercial use in both local area and wide area networks. In particular, connectionless Switched Multilmegabit Data Service (SMDS) and connection-oriented Frame Relay based broadband services are beginning to be o ered by a number of major operators in the US and Europe. This paper considers the issues that need to be addressed in the design of security services for such high speed networks. First the relevant characteristics of broadband network interfaces are discussed, some of the existing security protocols for TCP/IP and OSI networks are reviewed, and their suitability for providing security in broadband networks assessed. Then the developed arguments are applied to design security services for the connection-oriented Frame Relay networks. An earlier paper [3] considered the development of security services for the connectionless SMDS.