User-based authentication for wireless home networks

Most wireless home networks apply a shared key authentication model to authenticate devices. This results in security weaknesses due to the wireless protocol itself and the home environment conditions. Beyond the security aspects, there are some advantages to provide a user-based authentication for better controlling who accesses the network rather than which device accesses the network. User-based authentication schemes also facilitate user profiling, which is useful to leverage further recommendation services. This paper describes a WPA2-802.1X based solution for mitigating the weaknesses mentioned above while enabling a user-based authentication at home. It also discusses the appropriateness of the solution regarding the home environment.