The end-to-end communication scenario depicted in Figure 1 includes the communication between the end hosts and their nearest NSIS hops. "First-peer communications" refers to the peer-to-peer interaction between a signaling message originator, the NSIS Initiator (NI), and the first NSIS-aware entity along the path. This "first-peer communications" commonly comes with specific security requirements that are especially important for addressing security issues between the end host (and a user) and the network it is attached to.
To illustrate this, in roaming environments, it is difficult to assume the existence of a pre-established security association directly available for NSIS peers involved in first-peer communications, because these peers cannot be assumed to have any pre-existing relationship with each other. In contrast, in