Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol in 2006

Internet Protocol has become the standard communication channel when deploying wide area computer networks. Dat-ing back to the early 1980s, IPv4 design does not provide the necessary features to establish secure channels between peers and networks. Such a feature is required by many modern applications. It is common that security policies of networked communities mandate communication over un-trusted links to be carried out in a secure way at the lowest possible layer of the network protocol stack. Security Archi-tecture for the Internet Protocol was designed to overcome the limitations of the Internet Protocol and solve these prob-lems. It has become apparent that the components of the initial version of the security architecture released in the mid 1990s are not optimally designed and flawless in terms of se-curity. In December 2005 updated revisions of the relevant specifications were released. This paper examines the most significant changes introduced by the current revision of the Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol