Research On Diameter Protocol And Its Application In WLAN

Based on the research of diameter protocol, the paper provided a solution, in which, diameter protocol is used to provide AAA service to STA in WLAN. As the next generation AAA protocol, diameter protocol is uniform, open, distributed, and mobility-supported. As compared with RADIUS protocol, diameter protocol has more advantage in security, reliability and mobility. To use diameter protocol in access control is a good solution for the authentication, authorization and accounting to roam user.Firstly, the paper introduces the main content of diameter base protocol, including diameter message format, peer transport layer, end-to-end session layer, and error handling. Secondly, the paper researches the key technologies of diameter protocol, including reliable transport technology, message route technology, and network security technology. This proves reliability, mobility and security features of diameter protocol. Lastly, as an example of diameter application protocol, the paper describes diameter EAP application protocol to illuminate the form of diameter application protocol definition. A sample of diameter EAP application protocol which uses EAP-TLS protocol as an upper authentication protocol is explained.In paper, an experiment system of diameter WLAN access control system is implemented. The system is developed on the base of Open Diameter project and Host AP system. The experiment system included a diameter EAP application subsystem and a DhostAP access point subsystem. The diameter EAP application subsystem is a Diameter server which supports diameter EAP application protocol, and the DhostAP access point subsystem supports both of IEEE 802.11i specification and diameter EAP application protocol. One wireless notebook compute, which is a WinXP Suuplication, accessed WLAN by DhostAP access point. The Diameter server provided authenticated and authorized service using EAP-TLS protocol. This proved the feasibility of that diameter protocol is used to implement access control in WLAN.