Efficient Authentication and Authorization of Mobile Users Based on Peer-to-Peer Network Mechanisms

Abstract

This paper presents a peer-to-peer based authentication and authorization infrastructure to minimize authentication delays when mobile users roam across different wireless networks. The basic idea is to avoid exchanging security information between networks visited by a roaming user and the user's home authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server that is typically located in the home network possibly far away from the visited network. Instead, authentication and authorization of a roaming user shall be supported by an AAA server in the visited network. We propose that the AAA server that is responsible for authentication and authorization in a newly visited network locates the AAA server in the previously visited network and retrieves the required security information from that AAA server. The AAA servers can be organized in a peerto-peer manner and peer-to-peer mechanisms can be applied for searching and transferring security information between them. We propose several mechanisms for quickly locating the previously responsible AAA server in order to decrease authentication delays. The performance of these mechanisms is evaluated by simulations. Real performance measurements show the rather low performance overhead of application level forwarding used in peer-to-peer networks.

Towards a Global AAA Framework for Internet

“…Additional protocols must be defined and deployed on top of the framework to actually achieve authentication, authorization, and accounting, such as SAML [16] or Diameter SE extension [11]. Since AAA systems must sustain scalability, AAA entities may be redundant or distributed; in some systems the user account data is itinerant [8,17]. AAA protocols must be generic enough to transport different kind of information, and a peer-to-peer communication model is needed.…”

Secured Fast Handoff in 802.11-Based Wireless Mesh Networks for Pervasive Internet Access

“…A security association is established between the MC and every neighboring APs before the former associates with one of them. Similar mechanisms are employed in AAA context transfer [14] and P2P context transfer [15]. Such proactive authentication mechanisms can further reduce the authentication delay but may cause the problem of heavy traffic and waste of resources induced by redundant information transfer.…”

Local fast re‐authentication for 3G‐WLAN interworking

“…The protocol does not address key management operations which are essential in 3G-WLAN interworking systems. Differently from protocols suggested in References [8][9][10][11][12][13][14], LFR attains faster re-authentication and maintains a high state of security. Firstly, it does not require the usage of public key operations.…”

“…However, since 3GPP has adopted EAP-AKA as the standard security protocol for 3G-WLAN interworking, adopting other EAP-based solutions might raise interoperability issues. Braun et al [12] proposed retrieving security context (SC) information like AVs from the previously visited security context controller (SCC) instead of retrieving them from the 3GHN. An SCC periodically broadcasts information about UEs within its perimeter to neighbor SCCs.…”