Fast authentication methods for handovers between IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international workshop on Wireless mobile applications and services on WLAN hotspots
Proactive key distribution using neighbor graphs
IEEE Wireless Communications
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In this paper we introduce a ticket distribution scheme for Fast re-Authentication protocol (FAP) for inter-domain roaming. FAP is designed to reduce the authentication time of a mobile user in a visited administrative domain. The approach eliminates the need for communication between the visited network and the subscriber's home network for credentials verification and uses a short-living lightweight re-authentication ticket, which does not require a revocation mechanism. To minimize the number of authentication tickets sent to each subscriber, we propose the use of a neighbor table, which is maintained by an authentication server of each network. When the client requests a ticket, the server generates tickets only for the networks contained in the line of the neighbor table corresponding to the current location of the user. This method decreases the number of tickets sent and, consequently, the overhead and the delay of the ticket acquisition phase of the protocol. To create this neighbor table, we propose a reactive mode for the ticket acquisition phase. In this mode, the server sends tickets on demand of the client and only for the selected target network. Numerical results obtained from experiments on a test-bed and a series of simulations show that the proposed scheme enhances inter-domain handover parameters such as authentication latency and signaling cost.