Overlay and Virtual Private Networks Security Performances Analysis with Open Source Infrastructure Deployment

Abstract

Nowadays, some of the most well-deployed infrastructures are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Overlay Networks (ONs). They consist of hardware and software components designed to build private/secure channels, typically over the Internet. They are currently among the most reliable technologies for achieving this objective. VPNs are well-established and can be patched to address security vulnerabilities, while overlay networks represent the next-generation solution for secure communication. In this paper, for both VPNs and ONs, we analyze some important network performance components (RTT and bandwidth) while varying the type of overlay networks utilized for interconnecting traffic between two or more hosts (in the same data center, in different data centers in the same building, or over the Internet). These networks establish connections between KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) instances rather than the typical Docker/LXC/Podman containers. The first analysis aims to assess network performance as it is, without any overlay channels. Meanwhile, the second establishes various channels without encryption and the final analysis encapsulates overlay traffic via IPsec (Transport mode), where encrypted channels like VTI are not already available for use. A deep set of traffic simulation campaigns shows the obtained performance.

Keywords

• IPsec
• Linux
• OpenWrt
• Overlay
• LibreSwan
• IKE