Homogeneous Security in Heterogeneous Networks: Towards a Generic Security Management Protocol

The promises of next-generation Internet architectures are many and varied. Key among these are increased flexibility and diversity. What this translates into is increased variety not only in protocols and technology, but in the performance characteristics and services provided by these composite or heterogeneous networks. This is certainly true of the diversity of emerging networking technologies being deployed in the current and next generation Internet environments. A significant concern is the need for a generic security protocol that is not tied to particular types of layer 1 and 2 networks. Based on lessons learned from the current Internet architecture we can see that this protocol needs to be able to communicate beyond trust boundaries (i.e. the borders of Autonomous Systems). We propose a high-level architecture for such a Generic Security Protocol and use simulation to demonstrate the benefits of having inter-domain communication in the context of the next-generation public Internet.