Simultaneous Support of Multiple Security Protocols in a Group Communication Gateway

This paper presents first results of a project developing a specialized gateway for supporting the simultaneous use of two different kinds of security protocols. The gateway needs to work within a given architecture with deployed devices, restricting the choice of possible solutions to achieve interoperability between the devices. The major challenge is the application of group communication methods supporting highly dynamic group behavior and multicast transmissions. The solution presented in this paper is a gateway that is connecting two virtual domains, each representing network stations using one of the security protocols. In one domain, IPsec is deployed protecting the traffic between devices on the network layer. Traffic in the other domain is secured with an application layer protocol, which needs to stay compatible with non-IP networks. The concept is usable for securing both voice and data traffic, but this paper focuses on voice traffic. Support of data traffic is integrated but not addressed within this document