Subject: RE: [MSEC] Questions: Relation among GSAKMP, GDOI and other Docum ents

From: "Fredrik Lindholm (EAB)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 18:29:14 +0200

Hi,

To begin with, as Lakshminath hinted, today there exist 
three group key management protocols (in MSEC), but their 
purpose differs. In fact, it is very hard to create one 
single protocol that addresses everything from small-scale 
interactive groups up to large scale multicast groups 
(that's the basic reason why there exist a few different 
protocols today). 

So basically, the main difference between the protocols 
comes from the scenarios they address and the requirements 
these scenarios put on them. As Lakshminath also pointed 
out, the GKMArch will be updated to more clearly clarify 
the relations between the different protocols (or rather, 
clearly identify the basic scenarios the different 
protocols address).

I have tried to quickly summarize what I believe is the 
main characteristics of MIKEY that are different to the 
other protocols. 
 
The main scenarios, which MIKEY has been designed for, 
comprise conversational multimedia applications, and an 
environment of heterogeneous nature. One of the main  
requirements is to reduce the overall latency for 
the call setup (hence the key management should 
preferable not introduce extra roundtrips).
 
With this kind of scenario in mind (and the requirements 
it put), MIKEY was designed so that it could be carried 
by any session control protocol (e.g. SIP and RTSP), if 
needed, in order to avoid any extra roundtrips for the 
security setup. This gave MIKEY the specific property of 
being a one-roundtrip protocol. Some other characteristics 
of MIKEY is of course that: it focuses mainly on small-
scale interactive groups, and it provides an option to 
use "pre-shared" keys for the key transport.

Best Regards,
Fredrik

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