Hardware-accelerated IPsec, anyone?

Hubert Feyrer <[email protected]> Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:50:58 +0100 (CET)
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.current,gmane.os.netbsd.devel.crypto
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi,

what do people use for hardware accelerated IPsec these days?
I understand that only FAST_IPSEC (and not IPSEC) supports hardware
acceleration. Question is - what hardware out there does support IPsec?

Options that I see are:

  * glxsb(4) - here the manpage says no hardware IPsec is supported due to
    the lack of HMAC support:

      The glxsb driver only provides random numbers and AES acceleration.
      Since it does not provide HMACs, IPSec will not currently use it; it will
      however be used by OpenSSH.

  * hifn(4) - Available in various cards, but also with some warnings in
    the manpage:

      Support for the 7955 and 7956 is incomplete; the asymmetric crypto facil-
      ities are to be added and the performance is suboptimal.

  * ubsec(4) - looks promising by the manpage, but I've hardly heared of
    anyone use them (in contrast to HIFN based boards). Does anyone have
    a comment e.g. on the BCM58xx based NIAGARA cards sold by
    InterfaceMasters
    (http://www.interfacemasters.com/products/SSL_IPSec_cards.html)?

  * n8 / nsp(4) - I couldn't find a manufacturer here, and the driver
    is not listed in GENERIC (in contast to the above drivers).
    Not an option as far as I can see - anyone got a vendor for any cards?

What do people use for hardware accelerated IPsec these days?
What options did I miss, which ones are good, which ones to avoid?
Any dmesg examples that are known working / not working?

Thanks!


  - Hubert