Post-quantum ciphers (PQC) are designed to replace the current public-key ciphers which are vulnerable against the quantum-equipped adversaries, e.g., RSA. We study the incorporation of the PQC algorithms into the QUIC and TCP/TLS networking protocols and analyze the performances and overheads in authentication and connection establishment. To distinguish from previous research, we focus on the newer QUIC networking protocol while comparing it with TCP/TLS. The QUIC protocol builds on UDP and its superiority over TCP/TLS is highlighted by the quicker and lower-overhead connection establishments. QUIC is thus gaining wider deployment, including its planned standardization for HTTP/3. We implement and experiment in local networking environment which provides greater analyzability and control. We compare QUIC vs. TCP/TLS when using PQC and measure the handshake overhead in time duration while varying both the PQC security strength and the networking conditions. Our results show that the PQC overhead increases with the PQC cipher security strength (the key and signature sizes) and as the network condition worsens (greater occurrences of packet dropping). Comparing between the PQC and the classical cipher with comparable security strengths, the PQC ciphers outperform RSA in the handshake time duration; both Dilithium 2 and Falcon 512 handshakes are quicker than RSA 3072.
