Design of Protocol Conversion Gateway Based on Diameter for Interworking between Wireless LANs

Abstract

To provide Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) services, Diameter has become increasingly useful like the Remote Authentication Dial In User Services (RADIUS). Accordingly, in case that there may coexist RADIUS and Diameter in wireless LANs, protocol conversion is required for interworking between wireless LANs with different AAA mechanisms. In this paper, we propose a protocol conversion gateway that performs protocol conversion function and proxy function. In order to realize a protocol conversion gateway, translation between RADIUS attributes and Diameter Attribute Value Pairs (AVPs) is considered. In addition, procedures are newly proposed for terminating a particular session and re-authenticating an existing user. Finally, conversion and proxy procedures between RADIUS messages and Diameter messages for AAA services are presented. A protocol conversion gateway is designed in an AAA server based on Diameter. The scheme presented in this paper makes it easy to develop a protocol conversion gateway in wireless LANs.