A Service-Agent-Based Roaming Architecture for WLAN/Cellular Integrated Networks

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper, an agent-based integrated service model for wireless local area network (WLAN)/cellular networks and the relevant authentication and event tracking for billing support schemes are proposed. The service model does not require inefficient peer-to-peer roaming agreements to provide seamless user roaming between the WLAN hotspots and the cellular networks, which are operated by independent wireless network service providers. The proposed authentication and event-tracking schemes take the anonymity and intractability of mobile users into consideration and operate independently so that the integrated billing service can be applied to the cellular network, even if it still uses a traditional authentication scheme. Security analysis and overhead evaluation are given to demonstrate that the proposed service model and the supporting schemes are secure and efficient.Index Terms-Authentication, roaming, service agent (SA), wireless local area network (WLAN)/cellular integrated network.

PPAB: A Privacy-Preserving Authentication and Billing Architecture for Metropolitan Area Sharing Networks

“…On the other hand, localized authentication, which aims at localizing the authentication process between the tWISP and MUs without contacting the hWISP and the RB, created a new paradigm toward shortening the authentication delay and reducing the load on the RB [22]. In [23] and [24], it is suggested that a local AAA server be used as a buffer for caching the security contexts for each active MU. This scheme can greatly improve the performance since an MU requesting for handoff needs to communicate with the home AAA server only for once, and then, the subsequent authentication procedure can be performed at a local AAA server.…”

SLAB: A secure localized authentication and billing scheme for wireless mesh networks

“…In [13], [14], it is suggested to make use of a local AAA server as a buffer for caching the security contexts for each active MU. This scheme can greatly improve the performance since an MU requesting for handoff needs to communicate with the home AAA server only for once and then the subsequent authentication procedure can be performed at a local AAA server.…”

A novel localised authentication scheme in IEEE 802.11 based Wireless Mesh Networks

“…Our work is different from (Long et al, 2004;Baek et al, 2006;Shi et al, 2007) in the sense that an embedded two-factor authentication mechanism is implemented to determine whether a roaming MU is authentic without any intervention of the MU's home network as well as exchanging the authentication key in case the MU is authentic. A two-factor authentication mechanism is considered as a much stronger authentication method than the previously reported schemes since two independent authentication methods are adopted to ensure a MU to be a legitimate user, such as 'something you know' as one, and 'something you have' or 'something you are' as the other.…”

“…In addition to providing mutual authentication, the authors demonstrated that the protocol can defend various threats such as replay attack, man-in-the-middle attack, and key exposure. Shi et al (2007) realised localised authentication by using ticket, which is secrecy kept by MSs and APs after their first time authentication.…”