Design and performance analysis of authentication scheme for interworking between high-speed portable Internet (HPi) system and wireless local area networks (WLANs)

Recently, the demand for Internet services through wireless medium has increased. Wireless local area network (WLAN) supports high speed data services with low cost but it does not provide mobility. In order to overcome this drawback, the high-speed portable Internet (HPi) system has been developed in Korea, which supports high speed data service and mobility, and it is expected that WLAN and HPi networks will coexist within a few years. In these heterogeneous networks, it is important for the wireless system to be backwardly compatible with other wireless systems and to be smoothly roamed. In order to provide wireless Internet service for users who roam to other wireless networks, users should be authenticated and/or authorized. In this paper, we propose an authentication scheme for interworking between HPi and WLANs with different AAA protocols for user authentication. We design an interworking gateway (IG) between RADIUS-based network and Diameter-based network. The performance of the interworking procedures is analyzed. These results can be used as a guideline for designing an authentication protocol for interworking between heterogeneous networks with different AAA protocols.