Google open source PSP security protocol for data center traffic

Google makes the development of the PSP Security Protocol an open source project. With this move, the company hopes to promote the adoption of the encryption protocol for data center connections and implementation in hardware.

As part of the move to open source the PSP Security Protocol Google has the specification of the architecture, a reference implementation of the software and some test samples posted on GitHub. In addition, Google a discussion group for further development.

PSP Security Protocol is a TLS-like protocol used by Google to encrypt connections within and between data centers. According to Google, a disadvantage of TLS is that this protocol is less suitable for offloading to hardware and also does not support the use of UDP for transport. IPSec does support offloading, but Google says it doesn’t scale enough for its data centers.

PSP Security Protocol would not have these disadvantages, but it does require support for PSP on both sides of the connection. Google has already written software, SoftPSP, that enables network cards to establish PSP connections to older hardware. The move to make PSP open source should help broaden support for the protocol, including among network equipment manufacturers.

Hardware offloading makes a protocol much more efficient. According to Google, PSP’s cryptographic offloading saves the company 0.5 percent of all its computing power.

Format of PSP packets in Linux’s TCP/IP stack