Improving Mobile WiMAX EAP-TTLS Authentication With Minimum Downtime and Securing its Management Channel

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1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays for wireless networks, security represents a priority in order to assure protected communications. In IEEE 802.16, security has been considered as the main issue during the design of the protocol [1]. The Initial Network Entry procedure in an IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) network has security defects which can be exploited by the Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack [2]. Improving network security in a live enterprise network with a large number of subscribers geographically dispersed should be done with minimum downtime, in order not to affect critical user data/voice services. Also the management channel should be strongly protected in order to prevent intrusion in the network core that contains all of the vital servers for network functionality.
Authentication is the validating process of a user identity and often includes validating which services a user may access and, typically involves a supplicant (that resides in the mobile station), an authenticator (that may reside in the base station or a gateway), and an authentication server [3]. EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) is a standard protocol (frequently used in wireless networks) for data transmission authentication, which is invoked by an 802.1X enabled NAS (Network Access Server) device such as an 802.11 a/b/g Wireless Access Point [4]. The EAP work group is developing algorithms of supporting many authentications like ID/Password, Certificates, SMART Card and methods of session key standardization using such authentication algorithms [5]. EAP (see figure 1) integrates different authentication methods (advised by IEEE) to match the nature of the communication channel, such as EAP-PKM, EAP-MD5, EAP-OTP, EAP-GTC, EAP-TLS, EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA, and in additi...

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