Empirical performance evaluation of a fast authentication scheme in wireless access networks

Wireless access using contributed access points is fast becoming a reality. Technological means are now available for realizing this “anywhere anytime” low-cost wireless access whereby un-utilized wireless resources can be harnessed to form a collaborative network for public access. The success of such access facilities depend largely on the provisioning of fast authentication among the access points. This is crucial for supporting real-time applications such as Voice Over IP (VoIP). In our earlier work, we had developed an inter-domain fast authentication scheme based on the concept of “trust-clouds”. A trust-cloud is formed among neighbouring access points based on a relationship among the owners of the access points. Fast authentication among these inter-domain sites is achieved through cooperation among the trust-cloud members. In previous work, we theoretically formulated the concept of trust-clouds. In this paper we report on the implementation and experimental results of the “trust-clouds” fast authentication concept on legacy hardware. The experimental results verify that the trust-cloud framework can yield significant delay gains for the authentication process when handing off between administrative domains. It is also shown that no special computing platform is needed to achieve these benefits, indeed our testbed was implemented on low end hardware.