An authentication scheme for fast handover between WiFi access points

In this paper, we propose an authentication scheme that is designed to reduce the authentication delay during a WiFi handover process. We observe that the largest part of the delay is due to the remote communications between the access point and the AAA Server that authorizes the access to the network. In order to eliminate remote communications, our scheme uses pre-authorization, and it pre-distributes authentication information to the access points that are the potential targets of a future handover. This ensures that only local communications (between the Mobile Station and the access point) take place during the handover itself. We describe the design of our scheme, as well as report on a proofof-concept implementation. Our validation results show that our scheme breaks the dependency of the authentication delay on the round-trip time between the access point and the AAA Server. This makes our scheme applicable in real time applications such as telephony and video streaming for WiFi users.