A New Enhancement for Security Mechanism in Routers

Problem statement: Routers are very important components in any network. They control and organize the in-bound traffic and the out-bound traffic. Controlling a router by an intruder leaves the entire network unsecured. In different studies, Router security was discussed from different aspects such as the routing protocol, the firewall. In this research, we present a new effective security mechanism for routers depending on the packet structure. Approach: Our approach in the new security mechanism is based on the utilization of the unused bits in the packet structure that have been left for future use. These unused bits will be used for security purposes to increase the protection level along the path between various routers between networks. Results: In the proposed approach, the router represents a manager that can take security decisions and coordinate between the operations that are related to both the packet and the routing table, both of which will assume a new structure. Achieving integration between these main routing components will make the routing of information more secure. Conclusions/Recommendations: From the analysis, we see that the proposed mechanism takes the communication security a step further without extra cost and effort and this is because we have used the unused bits that are already exist in the packet header.