Performance analysis of elliptic curve cryptography in the IP security protocol

One proposed method of decreasing the negotiation time in IPSec is to replace computations over finite fields with computations over elliptic curve groups in the IPSec negotiations.; In this thesis, we examine the performance of elliptic curve cryptography by implementing elliptic curve cryptography in IPSec. The implementation replaced the Diffie-Hellman key exchange over finite fields with an elliptic curve analogue. For signing, the chosen implementation of IPSec uses RSA digital signatures. Since there is no direct elliptic curve analogue of RSA, signing via the Digital Signature Algorithm was implemented before the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Experiments were conducted between two hosts on a switched network. The elliptic curves in the experiments were a combination of FISP182-2 NIST recommended curves and lab generated curves. Corresponding comparable-security key sizes for finite fields were found by interpolating the key sizes among published key-length equivalences.; Experiments with the Diffie-Hellman key negotiation protocol in both finite fields and elliptic curves were conducted. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...