Securing IEEE 1588 by IPsec tunnels - An analysis

IPsec is one of the most widespread protocols to establish secure communication for the Internet Protocol. Besides the fact that this protocol is fully integrated in the Internet Protocol suite, the main advantage of using secure tunnels for IEEE 1588 clock synchronization is the reduced maintenance effort. Instead of requiring, e.g., different key management or connection setup protocols for each application a single tunnel can be used to protect underlying services such as clock synchronization by IEEE 1588 and many other applications. This paper analyzes the usage of IPsec security mechanisms to protect the IEEE 1588 clock synchronization protocol and, in particular, its impact on the precision of clock synchronization. Straightforward application as well as dedicated designs to integrate high-precision, hardware-supported clock synchronization are investigated. Measurements show that for lower precision IPsec can be applied straightforward, for high precision dedicated modification on hardware and algorithms are required.