Lightweight host and user authentication protocol for All-IP telecom networks

Abstract

Future wireless networks are moving fast towards all-IP network architectures and mobile operators are expanding their services outside traditional cellular networks becoming multi-access operators. This lays stringent requirements on access security, where implementing consistent security policies over disparate radio accesses becomes a challenge. In this paper, we introduce a novel host and user authentication protocol based on a lightweight Host Identity Diet Exchange Protocol that extends the existing 3GPP user authentication architecture and reuses the standard Authentication and Key Agreement scheme. Furthermore, quantitative evaluation of an implementation and real deployment of our proposal along with an extensive analysis of security features is presented. Our measurements and analysis show that the proposal is a feasible lightweight authentication mechanism for mobile network use and it improves the security features of the original Diet Exchange.