Distributed Authentication Technology Research

With increase in network application, we need to assure the security of commercial,personal, military and governmental information so that only authorized people are allowed to access it. First, identities of users are authenticated. Next, access control to legitimate users is required so that only legitimate users can access authenticated system resources. Therefore, it is very necessary that security of systems is guaranteed by identity authentication and access control.Recently, Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET), derived from the field of military communication, has become the more and more widely frequently referred in research for non-military mobile communications. On account of many excellent characteristics, MANET, not only for military communication such as Tactical Internet, War-field Information System, but also for other communication environment such as Disaster Backing, Personal/Home LAN, has the bright future. However, MANET has suffered from the enormous secure threats of the network, and has the difficulty of resolving secure issues; hence there is no far-ranging deployment of MANET in military or commercial field. As a result, Security Authentication becomes one of crucial infrastructure, which is capable of satisfying the secure requirements of MANET. Studying the architecture and design techniques of Security Authentication in MANET, for the purpose of the better development and practical application in military and commercial field in future, has the important strategically and economic meaning.In this paper, we start with background related research on this subject. Firstly, we describe in detail theory related to authentication. Then, we analyze various schemes of authentication technique. At last,we suggest an authentication scheme of MANET, whose key technique is analyzed by us.