An ID Based Secure Distributed Dynamic IP Configuration Scheme for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Secure dynamic IP addressing is a prime requirement in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), as the node cannot participate in unicast communications or routing until it is assigned a unique address. Recently, several approaches have been proposed for dynamic address allocation in MANET and most of the these approaches rely on broadcasting for address solicitation and/or duplicate address detection. As a result, several types of security threats can be observed at the time of address allocation. In this paper, we present an ID based distributed dynamic IP configuration scheme that securely allocate IP addresses to the authorized nodes for a mobile ad hoc network without broadcasting throughout the network. The scheme is distributed among MANET nodes and therefore each node can generate unique IP addresses from its own IP address and can assign that addresses to the new nodes. The proposed scheme provides authentication for address allocation without the help of a trusted third party while taking care of the security-threats associated with dynamic IP allocation protocol. Performance analysis shows that the proposed addressing scheme has low control overhead and fairly good addressing latency with added security mechanisms compared to the similar existing configuration schemes. Moreover, the proposed scheme is efficient and secure to solve the problem of network partitions and mergers along with the arrival and departure of a node.