The Design and Deployment of the TUT Public Access Architecture

Abstract

The development and widely spread usage of wireless networks, laptop computers, and other mobile technologies have increased both the number of mobile users and the need for secure, usable, and scalable methods to control the user access to the network. Especially in wireless networks, the security architecture is often designed as if wireless medium would just be a cable replacement. Considerable effort is invested in securing the radio access with encryption, but at the same time end-to-end security and user mobility requirements are neglected.

To develop a good network architecture a broader view is needed. The architecture must balance the requirements concerning usability, management and security, to get it widely accepted and used. By concentrating on a single issue like link-level security, this cannot be achieved. Instead, the architecture must be developed so that all requirements and existing infrastructures and services, are taken into account from the beginning of the design process. This thesis presents the TUT Public Access architecture, which was designed in this way, and deployed successfully at the campus of Tampere University of Technology. /Kir09