A Secure IPv6-based Urban Wireless Mesh Network (SUMNv6)

Security and fast handover are the two major concerns for the existence of Wireless Mesh Network (WMN). Existing solutions for Internet access by mobile users – Mobile IPv6, and its enhancements such as HMIPv6, F-HMIPv6 and HCF – have been designed to improve the handover latency without any light weight security considerations. The Route Optimization (RO) of MIPv6 introduces new security threats and the Return Routability (RR) test is only a weak solution for MIPv6 supplemented Internet. This paper proposes a secure F-HMIPv6-based framework to WMN that offers secure and fast handover as well as secure RO. The proposed framework addresses the security threats to both MIPv6 and WMN, improves the security of the existing RR test, and uses efficient key management. It is designed to enable secure, fast, and efficient signaling and communications for mesh clients within WMN as well as with outside world. This paper presents detailed cost analysis and numerical results to compare the proposed scheme with HMIPv6.