A Simplified Network Access Control Design and Implementation for M2M Communication Using SDN

Network access control is an established security method that only grants access to authorised devices. The 802.1X standard defines the mechanisms for implementing network access control in legacy networks. However, its implementation requires hardware and software components that are not commonly found in small deployments and also adds to the complexity of the network and the deployment time. The Software- defined Networking (SDN) offers an opportunity to develop new network access control solutions, among other things, that can be used to simplify and speed up the implementation and deployment of small, localised sensor networks. In this paper we demonstrate how SDN can be used to develop a basic network access control service without using 802.1X software and hardware while also offering the ability to adjust the available bandwidth and network access policy per device. The proposed solution provides quick and flexible network deployments for IoT sensor networks and other types of M2M communication. We implement our proposed architecture using OpenDaylight and OpenFlow switches and evaluate its performance by running tests with multiple client devices and various policies. Our results show that the studied approach can be a valid approach for small to medium sized networks that requires quick and low- cost deployment and high flexibility in terms of adding new devices.