The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is a procedure defined in RFC 6960 for checking the validity of a certificate at a central instance. Unlike certificate revocation lists (CRLs), the full CRL does not need to be downloaded periodically; instead, an on-demand OCSP request is made to the OCSP server when the connection is established, which ensures that the information about the validity of the certificate is always up-to-date. Only a small amount of data is transmitted since only the validity information for a certificate is sent. Compared to the CRL-based method, the validity information is always up-to-date and verification is faster.
The OCSP server can only be used in conjunction with a certification authority (CA) on the same device (R&S®NC Smart Certificate). The OCSP server is not able to provide validity information for certificates from other CAs.
In order for the OCSP server to be used to generate certificates per R&S®NC Smart Certificate, it must be assigned a certificate and a new entry is required in the profile for certificate creation in order to identify the OCSP server.
