Designing Smartcards for Emerging Wireless Networks

This paper presents our work relating to introduction of EAP smartcards in emerging wireless LAN like Wi-Fi or WiMax. We analyse basic characteristics involved in authentication protocols from feasibility and performances points of view. We shortly introduce our open Java architecture, and underline some observed interoperability issues. We present and analyze results obtained with five different smartcards, for two authentication scenarios: the first one works with an asymmetric algorithm (EAP-TLS, a transparent transport of the well known SSL standard), and the second method uses the EAPAKA protocol, which is an adaptation of the symmetric Milenage algorithm. We introduce a new class of smartcard which acts as EAP server, and that has been successfully tested in operational networks. Finally we suggest a new way to manage and use smartcards, remotely and securely, by using Trusted EAP Modules.