1. Introduction

This document assumes that the reader is familiar with the terms and concepts described in the "Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol" [Ken-Arch], hereafter referred to as the Security Architecture document. In particular, the reader should be familiar with the definitions of security services offered by the Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) [Ken-ESP] and the IP Authentication Header (AH), the concept of Security Associations, the ways in which ESP can be used in conjunction with the Authentication Header (AH), and the different key management options available for ESP and AH.

The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this document, are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [Bra97].

The IP Authentication Header (AH) is used to provide connectionless integrity and data origin authentication for IP datagrams (hereafter referred to as just "integrity") and to provide protection against replays. This latter, optional service may be selected, by the receiver, when a Security Association (SA) is established. (The protocol default requires the sender to increment the sequence number used for anti-replay, but the service is effective only if the receiver checks the sequence number.) However, to make use of the Extended Sequence Number feature in an interoperable fashion, AH does impose a requirement on SA management protocols to be able to negotiate this new feature (see Section 2.5.1 below).

AH provides authentication for as much of the IP header as possible, as well as for next level protocol data. However, some IP header fields may change in transit and the value of these fields, when the packet arrives at the receiver, may not be predictable by the sender. The values of such fields cannot be protected by AH. Thus, the protection provided to the IP header by AH is piecemeal. (See Appendix A.)

AH may be applied alone, in combination with the IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) [Ken-ESP], or in a nested fashion (see Security Architecture document [Ken-Arch]). Security services can be provided between a pair of communicating hosts, between a pair of communicating security gateways, or between a security gateway and a host. ESP may be used to provide the same anti-replay and similar integrity services, and it also provides a confidentiality (encryption) service. The primary difference between the integrity provided by ESP and AH is the extent of the coverage. Specifically, ESP does not protect any IP header fields unless those fields are encapsulated by ESP (e.g., via use of tunnel mode). For more details on how to use AH and ESP in various network environments, see the Security Architecture document [Ken-Arch].

Section 7 provides a brief review of the differences between this document and RFC 2402 [RFC2402].