A Protocol for Re-authentication and Handoff Notification in Wireless Mesh Networks

Mesh technology has captured the interest of university research and industry, because of its capacity to meet at the same time the requirements of Internet service provider and users. But, its architecture and configuration do not ensure a protection against the unauthorized use of the network since the used basic security measures do not include the concept of mobility. Our endeavor in this paper is to introduce a re-authentication scheme for secure handoff based on an efficient mobility management. First, we have treated the mobility aspect. Indeed, we applied the Mobility Notification Message procedure to support an environment which manages handoff in effective way. Then, using this technique, we have defined a new scheme to provide security during handoff. Our study shows that the proposed protocol can provide more protected network and more effective re-authentication scheme in term of minimized handoff latency as well as reduced blocking and loss rates.