Research Of Security Technology For Wireless Local Area Network Based On IPSec

Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is the product of computer network and wireless communication. It has many advantages, such as portability, low cost and high efficiency, so it has a great deal of applications. At present, WLAN has become an essential part of the commercial network. But WLAN is attacked more easily than Local Area Network (LAN), because its transmission channel is open. We must put a premium on wireless security. Otherwise the problem of wireless security will arrest development of WLAN.IEEE 802.11 is the fundamental standard of WLAN. Its security strategy is mainly comprised of authentication and encryption. Research of encryption is on Logical Link Control (LLC) layer. The normal protocol of encryption is Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). However it has been proved that WEP has many weaknesses by a lot of research. This paper adopts IP Security (IPSec) as the important supplementary for wireless security strategy. IPSec is the security protocol for network layer. It's the most complete technical of network security for Internet and apt to extend. The tunnel which is built by IPSec is much more secure and reliable.First, this article introduces the topology architecture and protocol hierarchical structure of 802.11 WLAN. It discovers the relationship between its protocol hierarchical structure and its security-Second, this paper makes a survey of 802.11 wireless security mechanisms which include authentication and encryption. It analyzes the wireless security based on WEP algorithm and demonstrates the faults of WEP. After that, it presents a security solution for WLAN based on IP Security (IPSec).Third, the article studies IPSec architecture, working mode and main protocols which include Authentication Header (AH), Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) and Internet key exchange (IKE).Then, the paper puts forward solution for WLAN security problem based on IPSec. It designs a remote communication model and communication rules based on VPN, a security implementation model of IPSec, a security communication protocol and the security communication flow. It implements AH, ESP and IKE in Linux operating system.Finally, it summarizes the features of this article, and gives prospective view of the future research.