Interdomain Routing Security (BGP-4): A Comparison between S-BGP and soBGP

by Rostom Zouaghi


Abstract:


The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the most important protocol for the interconnectivity 
of the Internet. Although it has shown acceptable performance, there are many issues about 
its capability to meet the scale of the growth of the Internet, mainly because of the security 
issues that surround interdomain routing. The Internet is important to many organisations in 
various contexts. Thus, it is required to provide a highly secure protocol to keep the normal 
operation of the Internet. BGP suffers from many security issues. In this dissertation, 
we cover those issues and provide the security requirements for this protocol. We enumerate 
the numerous attacks that can be conducted against BGP. The aim of this study is to examine 
two considerably discussed protocols. Secure-BGP (S-BGP) and secure origin BGP (soBGP) have 
shown a revolutionary view on interdomain routing since they endeavour to providing security 
mechanisms at the protocol level. The objective is extended to comparing these two solutions 
by examining their contribution to the Border Gateway Protocol in terms of security. Moreover, 
we study their interoperability, efficiency, performance, and the residual vulnerabilities that 
each solution failed to resolve. Our findings have revealed that ultimately, the solution chosen 
will be dependent on the desired level of security and deployability. As is often the case with 
security, a compromise between security and feasibility is of a major concern and 
cost-effectiveness is the main driver behind deployment.