The Analysis And Study On Security Sublayer Of Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks

The wireless nework is an important trend in the development of computer and communication. Along with the wide-spread application of the wireless network, more and more attention is paid to the security of data transmission. It's very significative to research the security of the wireless network.Broadband wireless access network is a wireless Internet important constituent. The security problem of the broadband wireless access networks is the entire wireless Internet security system important constituent, has the very high research value.Firstly this paper simply introduced the network security meaning and provided a brief description of the basic network security technologies such as cryptography, authentication techniques, key management technology, and so on. Then a quite detailed presentation of condoms to security socket layer protocol and wireless transport layer security has built the foundation for the study of security mechanism of IEEE 802.16.The wireless metropolitan area networks technologies based-on IEEE 802.16 are the present mainstream technologies of broadband wireless access technologies. It can provide broadband wireless aeecss for fixed, carried and nomadic equipment. People focus on its security. This article has conducted the thorough research especially to the security mechanism of wireless metropolitan networks. IEEE Std 802.16-2004 is defined by a security sublayer in medium access control layer to provide security. Security sublayer includes two major protocols as follows: An encapsulation protocol for encrypting packet data and a privacy key management protocol. The encapsulation protocol defines a set of supported cryptographic suits, i.e., pairings of data encryption and authentication algorithms, and the rules for applying those algorithms to a MAC PDU payload. And privacy key management protocol provides the secure distribution of keying data from BS to SS. Through this key management protocol, ths SS and the BS synchronize keying data; in addition, the BS uses the protocol to enforce conditional access to network service. Encryption method and privacy key mangement protocol is the main content of security sublayer. We studied the security sublayer in MAC layer of IEEE Std 802.16-2004 with the two aspect in detail.Finally, this paper has carried on the contrast analysis to the wireless metropolitan area networks, the wireless local area networks and the 3G technology security mechanism, proposed several programmes to enhance the security of wireless networks such as dynamic security link, virtual private network, etc. We put forward some proposals to improve the security security mechanism of wireless metropolitan network.