EAP-Kerberos: A Low Latency EAP Authentication Method for Faster Handoffs in Wireless Access Networks

Abstract

SUMMARYThe wireless medium is a key technology for enabling ubiquitous and continuous network connectivity. It is becoming more and more important in our daily life especially with the increasing adoption of networking technologies in many fields such as medical care and transportation systems. Although most wireless technologies nowadays provide satisfying bandwidth and higher speeds, several of these technologies still lack improvements with regard to handoff performance. In this paper, we focus on wireless network technologies that rely on the Extensible Authentication Protocol for mutual authentication between the station and the access network. Such technologies include local area wireless networks (IEEE 802.11) as well as broadband wireless networks (IEEE 802.16). We present a new EAP authentication method based on a three party authentication scheme, namely Kerberos, that considerably shortens handoff delays. Compared to other methods, the proposed method has the advantage of not requiring any changes on the access points, making it readily deployable at reasonable costs.

Revisiting WiFi offloading in the wild for V2I applications

“…The time spent for establishing end-to-end Internet connectivity in provider-managed networks is larger than the one in open WiFi networks because of the more complicated and lengthened interactions with the authentication and DHCP server in core networks. Therefore, optimizations, such as adopting authentication methods for faster handoffs [56,57] and granting extended DHCP leases to clients to retain its IP address, may reduce this time. Nonetheless, on average, this overhead only counts for a small part (10%-18%) of the whole duration of an association.…”