IKE

networkingsecurity

Stands for: Internet Key Exchange

The protocol that negotiates keys and security parameters for IPsec VPNs.

Internet Key Exchange (RFC 7296) sets up the security associations an IPsec tunnel needs - authenticating the peers and agreeing on keys - before encrypted traffic can flow.

Internet Key Exchange negotiates the security associations IPsec uses, authenticating the peers and establishing keys in two phases: one to protect the negotiation itself, and one to derive the keys that protect traffic.

That two-phase structure is the first diagnostic question in any IPsec failure, because which phase failed narrows the cause sharply. A phase one failure points at authentication, identity or proposal mismatch; a phase two failure points at mismatched traffic selectors or transform sets, meaning the tunnel authenticated and then disagreed about what to protect. IKEv2 simplified the exchange considerably and added reliability features, and mixing versions between endpoints is its own category of failure.

Also known as: ike, IKEv2

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