Trust requirements and performance of a fast subtransport-level protocol for secure communication

A secure network protocol called the authenticated datagram protocol (ADP) that optimizes the performance of global networks by establishing host-to-host secure channels and building agent-to-agent channels on top of host-to-host channels is presented. The performance advantages of ADP come with an accompanying set of trust requirements that are stringent for a network spanning mutually distrustful organizations. The cause for this stringency is shown to be propagation of trust relationships in ADP. Methods of breaking their propagation and thereby accomplishing a significant reduction in ADP´s trust requirements are presented. ADP, being a protocol for establishing host-to-host channels, can be handled at the subtransport level of the protocol hierarchy. A prototype of ADP implemented on Sun workstations connected by an Ethernet is described. Experimental measurements confirm that both the average latency of messages and the maximum throughput are substantially better than other secure protocols