A secure and performant token-based authentication for infrastructure and mesh 802.1X networks

This work deals with the design of secure handoff protocols for wireless networks using the security model introduced by IEEE 802.1X standard. The key exchange model introduced in the standard might be implemented in multiple ways each one carrying advantages and disadvantages in terms of security and performance when applied to reauthentication protocol. After the analysis of different model of reauthentication we introduce a novel scheme based on token exchange to speed up the handoff phase. This protocol variant was designed and implemented as a prototype in a joint project between University of Florence and Telecom Italia Laboratories, and proved better performances than standard protocols while maintaining a high security level.