Formation of security association database (SAD) in internet protocol version 6 (IPv6)

Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) is a standard suite of protocols defined by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to provide security which includes data authentication, integrity, and confidentiality. IPSec provides data security at the IP packet level. IPSec developed for IPv6 as well as for IPv4. IPSec protocol provides an elegant solution to the security problem of IP protocol, at IP layer itself. Due to the features of IPSec protocol it is widely used protocol to secure IP packets. IPSec is an end-to-end security scheme operating in the Internet Layer of the Internet Protocol Suite, while some other Internet security systems in widespread use, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Shell (SSH), operate in the upper layers at Application layer. Hence, only IPSec protects any application traffic over an IP network. A security association is used to create a secure channel. The security association depends on the requirement of the communicating parties, which is actually the aspect of security desired. All the security associations can be stored in a database. The database is called the Security Association Database (SAD). The security association database can be understood as a two-dimensional table with each row defining a single SA.