Wireless mesh network security: A traffic engineering management approach

The wireless mesh network (WMN) is an emerging multihop, heterogeneous, easily scalable and low cost network. The architecture of the WMN is a connectionless-oriented, mobile and dynamic traffic of routed packets. The mesh infrastructure environment easily forms multiple chains of wireless LANs (WLAN) coupled with the simultaneous multihop transmission of data packets from peripherals via mobile gateways to the wireless cloud. WMN operates as an access network to other communication technologies. This exposes the WMN to numerous security challenges not only in the mesh transmission operation security but also in the overall security against foreign attacks. We surveyed and identified the security vulnerabilities in Internet Protocol (IP) broadband networks, the security challenges in the routing layer of the WMN and explored new concepts to solving security challenges in WMN using traffic engineering (TE) security resolution mechanisms. We analyzed the advantages, comparative strengths and weakness in the use of traffic engineering based on simulation results and evaluations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.