Security offloading network system for expanded security coverage in IPv6-based resource constrained data service networks

Abstract

Recent years have seen the development of successful internet of things (IoT) technologies based on IP-enabled data networks. Despite the growing demand for security of resource-constrained data service networks, a majority of nodes in them typically lack memory space and computational ability compared to Internet nodes. This restricts constrained nodes from implementing and operating burdensome security protocols and authentication methods. To overcome this problem, we propose a security offloading network system which expands the security coverage to constrained nodes in IPv6-based heterogeneous networks. The proposed system supports constrained nodes by offloading the handshake and data transmission of a security protocol to offloading agents. Constrained nodes can also utilize the ciphersuites of offloading agents without the burden of deploying them. The offloading server controls the registration, the authentication, and the load-balanced allocation of offloading-agents. The implementation and evaluation show the feasibility of the proposed system by presenting practical network performance analyses in respect of availability, responsiveness, protocol overhead, and validation. This research would be advantageous for constrained nodes to achieve a high level of security, lowering the cost of network devices at the same time.