An architecture for the Internet Key Exchange Protocol

In this paper we present the design, rationale, and implementation of the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) Protocol. This protocol is used to create and maintain Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) associations and secure tunnels in the IP layer. Secure tunnels are used to construct virtual private networks (VPNs) over the Internet. The implementation is done in the application layer. The design includes four components: (1) an IKE protocol engine to execute the IKE protocol, (2) a tunnel manager to create and manage secure tunnels—it generates requests to the IKE protocol engine to establish security associations, (3) VPN policy administration tools to manage VPN policies that guide the actions of the IKE protocol engine and the tunnel manager, and (4) a certificate proxy server to acquire and verify public key certificates that are used for authentication of messages and identities in the IKE protocol. The implementation was done on the Advanced Interactive Executive (AIX) operating system at IBM Research and has been transferred to IBM’s AIX, Application System/400, and System/390 products.