Scalability analysis of selected certificate validation scenarios

Abstract

The use of public key based cryptographic algorithms enables new applications for encryption and digital signatures, and offers solution to a range of authentication and information integrity problems. One cause of concern regarding public key cryptography is the amount of computational and network resources required for key management. Although this has been a research focus for some time, little work has been done to formally analyze the scalability properties of the key management procedures. The purpose of this paper is to offer an analysis of certificate validation operations from a scalability perspective. Furthermore, the focus of the analysis is on client side data rates. This focus has been chosen since the capacity of the network closest to the clients is scarce and likely to be a bottleneck. This is particularly true when the clients are connected through a wireless tactical network.