The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Various kinds of networks support network device groups and group memberships. Examples of such networks may include Virtual Private Networks (VPN), networks configured using Group Encrypted Transport Virtual Private Network (GET VPN) technology, and multicast networks. These networks may be managed by group management systems, such as, for example, the Group Domain of Interpretation (GDOI) system, that register requesters with the groups and maintain group states for the group members. GDOI is described in, for example, M. Baugher et al., “The Group Domain of Interpretation,” IETF RFC 3547,July 2003. By employing various authentication and/or authorization methods, registering provides the group with desirable security measures. However, registering may also be fairly CPU intensive, time consuming and bandwidth demanding.
Once a group member successfully completes the registration process with the group management system, the member may usually remain as a group member for as long as its connection with the group is active. However, there are situations when the group member might have to register with the group again. For example, the group member might have to repeat the registration process if it did not receive its replacement keys before the expiration of its current keys. Also, the group member might have to register again if the group member network does not support multicasting, and thus re-keying is unavailable. Other examples include when the group member's workstation was shut down, the group member lost its connection with the network, the communication server failed, all or part of the network failed, or the network experiences a power outage. In those situations, the group members may have to register with the group server again, and thus repeat the CPU intensive and time consuming process.