RFC 4301
Security Architecture for IP December 2005
1. Introduction
1.1. Summary of Contents of Document
This document specifies the base architecture for IPsec-compliant
systems. It describes how to provide a set of security services for
traffic at the IP layer, in both the IPv4 [
Pos81a] and IPv6 [DH98]
environments. This document describes the requirements for systems
that implement IPsec, the fundamental elements of such systems, and
how the elements fit together and fit into the IP environment. It
also describes the security services offered by the IPsec protocols,
and how these services can be employed in the IP environment. This
document does not address all aspects of the IPsec architecture.
Other documents address additional architectural details in
specialized environments, e.g., use of IPsec in Network Address
Translation (NAT) environments and more comprehensive support for IP
multicast. The fundamental components of the IPsec security
architecture are discussed in terms of their underlying, required
functionality. Additional RFCs (see
Section 1.3 for pointers to
other documents) define the protocols in (a), (c), and (d).
a. Security Protocols -- Authentication Header (AH) and
Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)
b. Security Associations -- what they are and how they work,
how they are managed, associated processing
c. Key Management -- manual and automated (The Internet Key
Exchange (IKE))
d. Cryptographic algorithms for authentication and encryption
This document is not a Security Architecture for the Internet; it
addresses security only at the IP layer, provided through the use of
a combination of cryptographic and protocol security mechanisms.
The spelling "IPsec" is preferred and used throughout this and all
related IPsec standards. All other capitalizations of IPsec (e.g.,
IPSEC, IPSec, ipsec) are deprecated. However, any capitalization of
the sequence of letters "IPsec" should be understood to refer to the
IPsec protocols.
The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD,
SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this
document, are to be interpreted as described in
RFC 2119 [Bra97].
1.2. Audience
The target audience for this document is primarily individuals who
implement this IP security technology or who architect systems that
will use this technology. Technically adept users of this technology
Kent & Seo Standards Track [Page 4]