Performance evaluation of a technology independent security gateway for Next Generation Networks

With the all IP based Next Generation Networks being deployed around the world, the use of real-time multimedia service applications is being extended from normal daily communications to emergency situations. However, currently different emergency providers utilise differing networks and different technologies. As such, conversations could be terminated at the setup phase or data could be transmitted in plaintext should incompatibility issues exit between terminals. To this end, a novel security gateway that can provide the necessary security support for incompatible terminals was proposed, developed and implemented to ensure the successful establishment of secure real-time multimedia conversations. A series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the security gateway through the use 40 Boghe softphone acting as the terminals. The experimental results demonstrate that the best performance of the prototype was achieved by utilising a multithreading and multi-buffering technique, with an average of 582 microseconds processing overhead. Based upon the ITU-Ts 150 milliseconds one way delay recommendation for voice communications, it is envisaged that such a marginal overhead will not be noticed by users in practice.