Traffic flow confidentiality security service in OSI computer network architecture

Various issues arising in the placement of traffic flow confidentiality service and encipherment, traffic padding, and routing control security mechanisms in the open system interconnection (OSI) reference model architecture are presented. It is suggested that to provide full traffic flow confidentiality service, a pair of encipherment devices should be placed into the physical transmission path of the physical layer. To perform this, an encipherment security mechanism should be applied. It is noted that full traffic flow security is not possible above the physical layer. Limited traffic flow confidentiality service may be made available at the network layer and/or application layer. For this purpose, routing control and/or traffic padding security mechanisms may be applied at the network and/or application layers