Performance analysis of the Kerberos protocol in a distributed environment

A computer network employing multiple Kerberos servers in a client-server environment, is considered. By using appropriate queueing models for the various network entities, namely, the client the server the Kerberos server and the physical network, formulas for the average transfer time are derived. The effect of exchanging one or more messages for each access to the Kerberos server is considered. Plots of performance curves for a typical distributed environment have shown that the system can be either encryption-limited or network-limited. It is concluded that improved throughput and delay characteristics can be achieved by using efficient implementations of the Kerberos protocol, together with multiple sessions for each access to the Kerberos server