Study of Timing Values in EAP Authenticated Wireless Hosts

Abstract

Wireless Local Area Networks have exhibited significant growth within the last few years in both home and corporate environments because of low cost and improved quality. This growth has fueled new applications for wireless networks ranging from advanced warehouse inventory systems to wireless Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones. Sometimes the deployment of wireless local area networks (WLANs) is even more economical than installing wired networks in a building. However, the level of security of wireless and wired networks remain a major concern. The IEEE 802.11i standard together with IEEE 802.1X standard provide enhanced encryption and authentication mechanism enabling rigid security for the wireless networks. However, increasing wireless network security breaches has proven the lack of protection mechanism for the WLANs. In this context we propose to investigate the possibility of using round trip timing values for studying the behavior of wireless hosts under different abnormal conditions. In order to test our concept we have analyzed large number of traces captured using EAP, PEAP, LEAP and TLS authenticated hosts from our experimental wireless network environment.