The QQUIC Transport Protocol: Quantum assisted UDP Internet Connections

TL;DR

The paper introduces QQUIC, a quantum-assisted transport protocol that replaces classical key exchange with quantum key distribution, enhancing security and potentially reducing network latency in some scenarios.

Contribution

It presents a novel modification of the QUIC protocol integrating quantum key distribution for secure, potentially faster internet connections.

Findings

QQUIC achieves provable security based on quantum mechanics.

QQUIC can reduce network latency compared to traditional QUIC.

Quantum connections serve as dedicated lines for key generation.

Abstract

Quantum key distribution, initialized in 1984, is a commercialized secure communication method which enables two parties to produce shared random secret key by the nature of quantum mechanics. We propose QQUIC (Quantum assisted Quick UDP Internet Connections) transport protocol, which modifies the famous QUIC transport protocol by employing the quantum key distribution instead of the original classical algorithms in the key exchanging stage. Thanks to the provable security of quantum key distribution, the security of QQUIC key does not depend on computational assumptions. Maybe surprisingly, QQUIC can reduce the network latency in some circumstance even comparing with QUIC. To achieve this, the attached quantum connections are used as the dedicated lines for key generation.