The Concept of Extensible Authentication Protocol for Mobile Equipment to Heterogeneous Network (EAP-M2H)

Abstract

Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) is a universal authentication framework defined by RFC3748 and updated by RFC5247. It is not a specific authentication mechanism for exclusive system and then the widespread acceptance and implementation in wireless networks or other Point-to-Point (P2P) connections. A number of vendor specific EAP methods were proposed for special purpose such as EAP-MD5, EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS, EAP-PEAP, LEAP, SPEKE, EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA, EAP-FAST, and so on. All of them have a common characteristic that the client submitted his Security Association (SA) to the neighbor Access Point (AP), then AP forward it to identify his validity by Authentication Authorization Accounting (AAA) server of both sides. Although these EAPs are design to meet the widespread authentication demands. But in fact they have the independent authentication procedure respectively. That is they are incompatible with each other. For mobile devices, in order to meet the needs of different connection it had to support many of the EAPs. This situation for the most mobile devices is a heavy load and result the inconvenient which move in the different service network. This paper devotes in solves this situation. For this goal, an extensible authentication protocol for mobile equipment to heterogeneous network (EAP-M2H) is provided in the paper. EAP-M2H development from the EAP-AKA and improve their applicability and compatibility in heterogeneous network.