Design and Implementation of SKIP

We present a key-distribution scheme that is particularly well suited for use in conjunction with a session-less datagram protocol such as IP or IPv6. We describe how this scheme can be used for both IP unicast and multicast applications, providing an approach for scalable multicast key distribution. We also describe an implementation of this scheme on the Solaris operating system, and present some findings on the performance of encryption at the IP layer. Note – This paper was originally presented at the INET ‘95 conference in Hawaii on June 28, 1995, under the title Simple Key Management for Internet Protocols (SKIP). It also appears in the conference proceedings under that title.