IPsec Terminology

IPSec is a framework of open standards. There are many technical terms in the logs of the NSX Edge and other VPN appliances that you can use to troubleshoot the IPSEC VPN.

The following terms are some of the standards that you might encounter:

• ISAKMP (Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol) is a protocol defined by RFC 2408 for establishing Security Associations (SA) and cryptographic keys in an Internet environment. ISAKMP only provides a framework for authentication and key exchange and this framework is key exchange independent.
• Oakley is a key-agreement protocol that allows authenticated parties to exchange keying material across an insecure connection using the Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm.
• IKE (Internet Key Exchange) is a combination of ISAKMP framework and Oakley. NSX Edge provides IKEv1, IKEv2, and IKE-Flex.
• Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange is a cryptographic protocol that allows two parties that have no prior knowledge of each other to establish jointly a shared secret key over an insecure communications channel. VSE supports DH group 2 (1024 bits) and group 5 (1536 bits).