In the early days of 3G and WiFi convergence, an operator managing a 3G network and a Wifi network needed to deploy an AKA authentication server for 3G operations, and a RADIUS sever with a separate user database and an authentication mechanism for Wifi operations.

The fact that the operator has to maintain two user management systems motivated efforts towards the unification of network access control of both technologies.

The solution to this was to specify EAP-AKA which specifies how the AKA authentication mechanism can be used to authenticate WiFi clients that have AKA credentials. With EAP-AKA, a mobile device can use its UMTS credentials to authenticate to a 802.11/802.16. The advantages provided by the convergence based on EAP-AKA are :

• Devices do not need additional cryptographic modules other than those needed for AKA.
• Devices do not need additional credentials other than AKA.
• Operator does not need to add a new authentication server, an additional generic AAA server and an AKA auth server are enough.

• EAP-AKA
• AKA_(security)
• RADIUS
• EAP

Labels: wireless, security