scope:

This memo describes the use of the RSA digital signature algorithm as an authentication algorithm within the revised IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) as described in RFC 4303 and the revised IP Authentication Header (AH) as described in RFC 4302. The use of a digital signature algorithm, such as RSA, provides data origin authentication in applications when a secret key method (e.g., HMAC) does not provide this property. One example is the use of ESP and AH to authenticate the sender of an IP multicast packet.