Performance Evaluation of Network Security Protocols on Open Source and Microsoft Windows Platforms

Abstract

Internet is increasingly being used to support collaborative applications such as voice and video-conferencing, replicated servers and databases of different types. Since most communication over the Internet involves the traversal of insecure open networks, basic security services such as data privacy, integrity and authentication are necessary. One of the levels of computer security is operating system security. This paper analyzes the limitations and behavioral patterns of security protocols across different platform. It compared the performance of security protocols in terms of authentication, encryption algorithm, cryptographic methods etc.; in order to determine which platform provides better support for security protocols.

Network simulator tool was used to simulate different scenarios to show the performance of security protocols across two Operating System Platforms (Linux and Windows). Analysis of the simulation values of selected performance metrics of the security protocols, across both platforms, were evaluated.

Results obtained showed comparable differences in the values of the performance parameters considered. For instance, IP processing delay of the Windows Client node was initially high (about 0.0125 milliseconds), but later decreases to about 0.0115 milliseconds, while the Linux Client node is constant at about 0.0115 milliseconds. Variations in the values of the performance parameters for both platforms, in both network scenarios are not significant enough to reflect a noticeable difference in the impacts of the network security protocols on the performance of the operating system platforms.

Keywords: Open Source, IP Security, SSL, OPNET, Security Protocol, Operating Systems