FVS338 ProSafe VPN Firewall 50 Re ference Manual
5-4 Virtual Private Networking
v1.0, March 2008

IKE Policies

The IKE (Internet Key Exchange) protocol performs negotiations between the two VPN
Gateways, and provides automatic management of the Keys used in IPSec. It is important to
remember that:
“Auto” generated VPN policies must use the IKE negotiation protocol.
“Manual” generate d VPN policies cannot use the IKE negotiation protocol.

IKE Policy Operation

IKE Policies are activated when:
1. The VPN Policy Selector determines that some traffic matches an existing VPN Policy. If the
VPN policy is of type “Auto”, then the Auto Policy Parameters defined in the VPN Policy
are accessed which specify which IKE Policy to use.
2. If the VPN Policy is a “Manual” policy, then the Manual Policy Parameters defined in the
VPN Policy are accessed and the first matching IKE Policy is used to start negotiations with
the remote VPN Gateway.
If negotiations fail, the next matching IKE Policy is used.
If none of the matching IKE Policies are acceptable to the remote VPN Gateway, then a
VPN tunnel cannot be established.
3. An IKE session is established, using the SA (Security Association) parameters specified in a
matching IKE Policy:
Keys and other parameters are exchanged.
An IPsec SA (Security Association) is established, using the parameters in the VPN
Policy.
The VPN tunnel is then available for data transfer.

IKE Policy Table

When you use the VPN W izard to set up a VPN tunnel, an IKE Policy is established and populated
in the Policy Table and is given the same name as the new VPN connection name. You ca n also
edit exiting policies or add new IKE policies directly on the Policy Table Screen. Each policy
contains the following data: