Comparative analysis of Internet Key Exchange protocols

Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol is a vibrant component of Internet Security protocol (IPSec). It plays a vital role to accomplish the tasks of negotiation and establishment of security parameters, generation and management of cryptographic keys, mutual authentication of participating peers and establishing security associations. Since the IPSec security relies primarily on secure IKE, therefore the review and analysis of IKE versions is essential prior to their deployment in IPSec. This paper not only reviews the versions 1 and 2 of IKE but also presents a comparative analysis of these key management protocols.