Re: hardware vs software (was Re: draft-ietf-ipsec-ciph-aes-ctr-00.txt)

[Stephen Kent <kent@bbn.com>]

Alex,

I agree that software would be hard pressed to keep up with very high 
speed LANs, but it is also fair to note that not all traffic merits 
IPsec protection. For example, I would expect to use S/MIME for 
e-mail, not bother securing NNTP, and most folks will continue to use 
SSL for web traffic. Also, workstations are not always transmitting 
or receiving packets, so the percentage of a CPU devoted to crypto 
needs to be tempered by that observation as well.

Steve