Design And Implementation Of Ipsec-based Security Card

The cyberspace security is more and more important, as data or information transmitted over the public networks are susceptible for tapping and sniffing. Many technologies are developed to secure our networks. Of these, Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) is widely used to prevent the networks from attacks and intrusions.Software-based implementation of the IP Sec Protocol can be very sophisticated, because it will take a great lot of time to encrypt the data at the sending side and decrypt them at the receiving node. These result in the performance issue.In this dissertation, a hardware-based method of designing and implementing secure network interface card of IPSec protocol is proposed. Firstly, the IPSec protocol is analyzed. Furthermore, the Encapsulation Security Payload protocol and the Authentication header protocol are discussed. Then, a scheme of implementing IPSec network interface card is presented, including the hardware design of IPSec NIC and its driver programming.According to the IPSec requirements, we employ the most advanced AES algorithm to protect the transmitted data. The hardware logic of implementing AES algorithm is designed, described by VHDL and downloaded into FPGA built on the testing printed circuit board.This IPSec NIC card can be used to protect data communications. Moreover, the encrypting and decrypting process are transparent to users. The testing and experimental result show that the throughputs of data can reach to 600Mbps, while according to the latest technical journal; it ranged from 200Mbps to 350Mbps in similar FPGA chips.