The IAB has revised its draft document on “A Survey of Authentication
Mechanisms.” Authentication is a common security issue for the design
of Internet protocols. A wide variety of authentication technologies
are avail- able. A common problem is knowing which technology to
choose or which of a variety of essentially similar implementations of
a given tech- nique to choose. This memo provides a survey of
available mechanisms and guidance on selecting one for a given
protocol.
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-auth-mech-04.txt