Securityoffasthandovermechanisminieee802.1xbased Adhocnetwork

Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes, dynamically forming a temporary network, whereas each member of this network can directly communicate to each other without relying on any fixed infrastructure such as access point or base station. Securing MANET is a big challenge, mostly because of the dynamic and cooperative nature of these networks. Handover procedure in secure MANET is a relative time consuming phase. Some solutions have been presented in the literature, and it is identified as a big issue, whether the authentication server must be contacted on every handover, or the handover procedures can be independently handled by the authenticators. We propose and evaluate a novel scheme for re-authentication in 802.1X based ad hoc network for fast handover while maintaining the security level achieved by the 802.1X standard. The proposed mechanism aimed to reduce the total handover procedure time, eliminate the time spent for packet exchanged with authentication server in the EAP phase.