Research Of Security, Authentication And Application Of WLAN

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is the application of the fast growing wireless communication technologies in the computer networks. In WLAN, data are transmitted through wireless channels, and communications between computers are supported by wireless multiplexing access. WLAN provides solutions for mobile communications, individual communications and multimedia applications.The development of Wireless LAN have wide prospect, as it acts for the complementarity and prolongation of the Local Area Network, it must satisfied the requirement and limitation in sereral aspects for its mobility. Because of the opening of wireless wave, the bottleneck restraining its development is security. Users hope to communicate safely and reliably. In this thesis, the security issues in WLAN are investigated, aiming at implementing the security and authentication of WLAN, and public applications.Firstly, the thesis analyses the application environment and security threatens of WLAN, then along the development of WLAN's secruity technology, analyses their characteristics, points out their deficiencies and compares some solutions, later, put forward security measures of multilayers, to lessen the risks.Secondly, with emphasis on the inplementing security and authentication of WLAN based on IEEE 802. IX which is a draft standard for port-based, network access control and EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) .We set up the authentication environment for inplementing EAP-MD5 and EAP-TLS, so we conclude EAP-MD5 is a sigle direction authentication by using a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server for authenticating client credentials, while EAP-TLS is a double derection authentication between the server and client.Meantime After a further investigation to public WLAN, a deep study of roaming, position management and load balance is made. Two frames of authentication & accounting are put forward. Also the function of load balance is implemented.Finally, the thesis summarizes the work done, and puts forward the possible extensions and improvements to the existing research.