IPsec: A Study Exploring Bandwidth and CPU Utilization

Network security is now imperative to the successful operation of a network. This paper considers the effect of the IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) protocol suite on network bandwidth and utilization, through a series of extended tests. The tests compare multiple protocols in terms of encryption only, integrity only, encryption with integrity and integrity with encryption scenarios. The results of the testing revealed that AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) used the most bandwidth and DES (Data Encryption Standard) and 3DES (Triple DES) were found to use the least. For CPU Central Processing Unit), 3DES and SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) were the algorithms that required the most processing power. These results should help a network administrator to make more informed choices for their network so they can balance the strongest security protocols with network bandwidth utilization and CPU utilization.