Securing multimedia services over satellite ATM networks

In recent years there has been increasing interest in interconnecting satellite and ATM networks, because both share common characteristics of the ability to provide bandwidth-on-demand and flexibility of integrating voice, video and data services. There are several new satellite constellation proposals that support multimedia service and transport ATM traffic. For a successful implementation of such systems it is essential to address the security requirements of users, satellite ATM network operators and multimedia service providers. In order to minimize delay and the cost of implementing security systems for satellite ATM networks, the network operator role (in security services) can be limited to the mutual authentication with satellite users during call set-up periods. In this paper a mutual authentication protocol between the user and the satellite network is presented using digital signature and public key systems. Also, another mutual authentication protocol between the user and the service provider is presented to provide end-to-end authentication and negotiation of security options such as selecting a secret key system and the key length. Finally, a detailed hardware implementation of ATM cell payload encryption is presented using the DES/TripleDES secret key system. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.