Secure multicast extensions for mobile networks

There has been a considerable interest shown in the area of mobility. With the advent of powerful portable devices such as laptop and palmtop there is a growing trend amongst users to go the nomadic way. This implies that a user can get access to any service at any time without any interruption. Such nomadic computing poses several challenges in multicasting and security. We first consider a framework that has been proposed by Acharya, Bakre and Badrinath (see Rutgers DCS TechReport LCS R-TR 243, 1995) for multicasting in mobile IP networks. We extend this framework to support a secure multicasting service. We describe secure schemes for a mobile host to initiate, join and leave a multicast group. We also discuss the secure movement of mobile hosts in intra and inter campus environments.