Why It Takes So Long to Connect to a WiFi Access Point

Today's WiFi networks deliver a large fraction of traffic. However, the performance and quality of WiFi networks are still far from satisfactory. Among many popular quality metrics (throughput, latency), the probability of successfully connecting to WiFi APs and the time cost of the WiFi connection set-up process are the two of the most critical metrics that affect WiFi users' experience. To understand the WiFi connection set-up process in real-world settings, we carry out measurement studies on $5$ million mobile users from $4$ representative cities associating with $7$ million APs in $0.4$ billion WiFi sessions, collected from a mobile "WiFi Manager" App that tops the Android/iOS App market. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to do such large scale study on: how large the WiFi connection set-up time cost is, what factors affect the WiFi connection set-up process, and what can be done to reduce the WiFi connection set-up time cost. Based on the measurement analysis, we develop a machine learning based AP selection strategy that can significantly improve WiFi connection set-up performance, against the conventional strategy purely based on signal strength, by reducing the connection set-up failures from $33\%$ to $3.6\%$ and reducing $80\%$ time costs of the connection set-up processes by more than $10$ times.Comment: 11pages, conferenc

Protection of LAN-wide, P2P interactions: a holistic approach

This article advocates the need of a holistic approach to protect LAN interactions and presents a solution for implementing it based on secure LAN (SLAN), a novel security architecture. SLAN uses the 802.1X access control mechanisms and is supported by a key distribution centre (KDC) built upon an 802.1X authentication server. The KDC is used, together with a new host identification policy and modified DHCP servers, to provide proper resource allocation and message authentication in DHCP transactions. The KDC is used to authenticate ARP transactions and to distribute session keys to pairs of LAN hosts, allowing them to set up arbitrary, LAN-wide peer-to-peer security associations using such session keys. We show how PPPoE and IPSec security associations may be instantiated and present a prototype implementation for IPSec

Network Access Control: Disruptive Technology?

Network Access Control (NAC) implements policy-based access control to the trusted network. It regulates entry to the network by the use of health verifiers and policy control points to mitigate the introduction of malicious software. However the current versions of NAC may not be the universal remedy to endpoint security that many vendors tout. Many organizations that are evaluating the technology, but that have not yet deployed a solution, believe that NAC presents an opportunity for severe disruption of their networks. A cursory examination of the technologies used and how they are deployed in the network appears to support this argument. The addition of NAC components can make the network architecture even more complex and subject to failure. However, one recent survey of organizations that have deployed a NAC solution indicates that the \u27common wisdom\u27 about NAC may not be correct

Security Design for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

Wireless networking is rising with the ever-increasing need for businesses to lower costs and support mobility of workers. Compared with wired networking, wireless capability offers more timeliness, affordability, and efficiency. When performing installations, there are many tangible cost savings with using less wire between the user's appliance and a server. However, most of the organization that decided to deploywireless network within their working environment often overlooked the security aspect of the deployed wireless LAN. Therefore, this will jeopardize the organization's safety in terms of network security and business trade secrets if their network is intruded by their rivals. This project concentrates on Wireless Local Area Network architecture and the security aspect of the designed network. Firstly, the project will emphasizes on researching about WLAN architecture. This is to ensure best practice method to be taken in designing the WLAN. It is then followed by extensive research to deploy better security to the designed network. However, the security aspect to be deployed is based on the needs and the architecture of the WLAN. The designed network is tested by conducting similar simulation at the lab which represents real - time performance and situation where the network architecture will be implemented and tested. For the time being, 802.IX / EAP ( Extensible Authentication Protocol ) is proven to be the best practice solution to secure any Wireless LAN implemented. Through the simulation, it will be proven that the proposed WLAN design is secure for implementation by any other interested parties

{SoK}: {An} Analysis of Protocol Design: Avoiding Traps for Implementation and Deployment

Today's Internet utilizes a multitude of different protocols. While some of these protocols were first implemented and used and later documented, other were first specified and then implemented. Regardless of how protocols came to be, their definitions can contain traps that lead to insecure implementations or deployments. A classical example is insufficiently strict authentication requirements in a protocol specification. The resulting Misconfigurations, i.e., not enabling strong authentication, are common root causes for Internet security incidents. Indeed, Internet protocols have been commonly designed without security in mind which leads to a multitude of misconfiguration traps. While this is slowly changing, to strict security considerations can have a similarly bad effect. Due to complex implementations and insufficient documentation, security features may remain unused, leaving deployments vulnerable. In this paper we provide a systematization of the security traps found in common Internet protocols. By separating protocols in four classes we identify major factors that lead to common security traps. These insights together with observations about end-user centric usability and security by default are then used to derive recommendations for improving existing and designing new protocols---without such security sensitive traps for operators, implementors and users

{SoK}: {An} Analysis of Protocol Design: Avoiding Traps for Implementation and Deployment

Today's Internet utilizes a multitude of different protocols. While some of these protocols were first implemented and used and later documented, other were first specified and then implemented. Regardless of how protocols came to be, their definitions can contain traps that lead to insecure implementations or deployments. A classical example is insufficiently strict authentication requirements in a protocol specification. The resulting Misconfigurations, i.e., not enabling strong authentication, are common root causes for Internet security incidents. Indeed, Internet protocols have been commonly designed without security in mind which leads to a multitude of misconfiguration traps. While this is slowly changing, to strict security considerations can have a similarly bad effect. Due to complex implementations and insufficient documentation, security features may remain unused, leaving deployments vulnerable. In this paper we provide a systematization of the security traps found in common Internet protocols. By separating protocols in four classes we identify major factors that lead to common security traps. These insights together with observations about end-user centric usability and security by default are then used to derive recommendations for improving existing and designing new protocols---without such security sensitive traps for operators, implementors and users