A scheme for MAC isolation to realize effective management in public wireless LAN

Abstract

Recently, IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) technology was rapidly developed and the high-speed wireless access was stepping into our lives. In public areas, the architecture of public wireless LAN (public WLAN) is proposed to solve the emerging management problems such as authentication, accounting and authorization, etc. [J.A. Laurila et al., (2001)]. But there is no previous good solution mentions the management for use of network operators' equipments. We specify how to use MAC isolation to enhance the public WLAN effective management. For IEEE 802.11 compliance, we propose a scheme to implement the MAC isolation by re-design the state machine of distribution/spl I.bar/service component in WLAN access point. Finally, a WLAN access point solution based on MPC860 embedded processor hardware and embedded Linux software is specified, and the simulation of MAC isolation in public WLAN is also presented. The result shows that the scheme by re-design the state machine of distribution/spl I.bar/service component in IEEE 802.11 access point to realize MAC isolation is effective and realizable.