SIP server security with TLS: Relative performance evaluation

Author

Kulin, Merima ; Kazaz, Tarik ; Mrdovic, Sasa

Author_Institution

Fac. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

fYear

2012

fDate

25-27 Oct. 2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

VoIP (Voice over Internet) provides delivery of voice information over unsecured IP-based networks like the Internet. VoIP data, signaling and voice, needs to be secured in such an environment. Security mechanisms take their toll on VoIP system performance. SIP is dominant signaling protocol for VoIP. This paper measures relative decrease in VoIP performance of system with secured SIP signaling over one without it. It compares SIP with authentication enabled over three transport protocols: UDP, TCP and TLS. Peak throughput of concurrent calls, registration request delay, session request delay, SIP server CPU and RAM usage are measured. Testbed environment consists of Asterisk IP private branch exchange (PBX) as a part of Elastix server, several SIP user agents and SIPp traffic generator. Test results show that performance of SIP over TLS based signaling is four times lower than the SIP signaling over UDP in most metrics.

Keywords

IP networks; Internet telephony; computer network security; private telephone exchanges; signalling protocols; telecommunication traffic; Asterisk IP private branch exchange; Elastix server; PBX; RAM usage measurement; SIP server CPU measurement; SIP server security; SIPp traffic generator; TLS; VoIP system performance; concurrent call measurement; peak throughput measurement; registration request delay measurement; relative performance evaluation; session request delay measurement; signaling protocol; unsecured IP-based network; voice over Internet; Authentication; Delay; Random access memory; Servers; Testing; Transport protocols; Asterisk; Elastix; IP PBX; Performance testing; SIPS; SIPp; TLS; VoIP;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Telecommunications (BIHTEL), 2012 IX International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Sarajevo

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-4875-1

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4673-4874-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BIHTEL.2012.6412062

Filename

6412062