Security issues in policy routing

Most routing protocols, including proposed policy routing protocols, focus on environments where detection of an attack after it has taken place is sufficient. The authors explore the design of policy routing mechanisms for sensitive environments where more aggressive preventative measures are mandated. In particular, they detail the design of four secure protocol versions that prevent abuse by cryptographic checks of data integrity. They analyze and compare these schemes in terms of their prepacket processing overhead. It is concluded that preventative security is feasible, although the overhead cost is quite high. Consequently, it is critical that prevention-based schemes coexist with detection-based schemes