A Throughput-Oriented Analytical Model for Post-Quantum Security Protocols

Abstract:Growing awareness of the impact of quantum threat on classical cryptography directly translates into a growing demand for accurate network simulation tools capable of estimating the integration effects of quantum-safe cryptography in current systems. In particular, the adoption of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has a direct impact on the performance of network endpoints and transmission overhead. This also affects the scalability of widely adopted security protocols such as TLS and SSH. In this paper, we present a throughput-oriented analytical model that provides a tight upper bound on the maximum sustainable rate of post-quantum secure connection establishment in TLS and SSH. This model takes into account both endpoint and network capacity constraints, decomposing the handshake process into dominant cryptographic operation time and network transmission time. Identifying the bottleneck allows us to derive the achievable throughput in terms of handshakes per second. The experimental results provided show the accuracy of the model against the data obtained from an experimental testbed using, among others, NIST standard primitives from FIPS 203, 204, and 205, including ML-KEM and ML-DSA. Finally, we integrate our model into a network environment and demonstrate how it can be leveraged to enable efficient resource allocation among multiple endpoints, optimizing PQC traffic in multiple-unicast scenarios.

13 pages. 8 figures

Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET); Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI); Performance (cs.PF); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2609.26284 [cs.CR]

(or arXiv:2609.26284v1 [cs.CR] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.26284 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)