SP and SA Databases

The not-so-current documents

IPsec Processing Discussion (MS Word version better view)
MSRIPv6 IPsec Databases (MS Word version better view)

describe the concept of the Security Policy and Security Association databases.

Here is an example of how the SP and SA reference each other:

Pointer Example

As can be seen from the example, all interfaces share common SPs. An interface can have specific SPs, also. All the common SPs must be entered before the specific SPs. This is accomplished by having all the common SPs entered with smaller SP index values than the specific SPs.