Fast Roaming Authentication in Wireless LANs

With the continuous advancements in wireless technology and the increasing use of wireless LANs, those who regularly use internet on the go have more and more expectations. This particularly holds true for time-sensitive applications such as voice and video over IP. With these services, users have started to expect no service interruption because of mobility. Simultaneously, users and service providers must be mutually authenticated to ensure security while these wireless systems are being used. It is important that latency is recued because of the authenticated hand off when one is on the move. There is increased latency in handoff when each time one is stationed at a new place, re-authentication of the mobile station is required. This paper discusses the reactive and proactive schemes that have been suggested to reduce roaming authentication latency. It provided a proactive scheme and a hybrid scheme that make use of the reactive as well as proactive schemes. These come as useful schemes when it comes to reducing authentication latency while also ensuring a high level of security for the user in comparison with the currently available roaming authentication schemes.