| Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a cost-effective alterative for large-area communications. A WMN consists of nodes that are able to communicate through wireless media over distributed architecture. Security is an important issue in WMNs.;The conventional security mechanisms that work well for wireless local area networks (WLANs), most notably the Wi-H WPA2 and IEEE 802.11i standards, however, do not scale well for WMNs. Recognizing this issue, the IEEE 802.11 task group "s" has been charged to develop a Wireless Mesh amendment [4] for the wireless network standard suite, which is still in the making and is estimated to take several more years to complete.;It is natural to investigate mesh network security from the ad-hoc network security point of view. However, there is a subtle difference between wireless ad-hoc networks and wireless mesh networks. An ad-hoc network typically deals with an arbitrary topology of client nodes and associated hosts, while a mesh network typically deals with a network with fixed wireless access nodes to provide the multi-hopping backhaul service between client nodes and the Internet. This subtlety is vital for wireless mesh network security.;This thesis is directed toward a better understanding of WMN security. It will first discuss and summarize security threats and vulnerabilities on wireless mesh networks. It will then investigate various security protocols and mechanisms for WMNs. |
