Authentication Mechanism to Secure Communication between Wireless SDN Planes

Software-defined networking (SDN) is the propitious step towards the future. Data Plane decoupling from control plane makes the networking environment more flexible and programmable. Cost effectiveness, flexibility, programmability makes SDN the favorite choice for todays industry. SDN architecture can also provide numerous benefits in wireless scenario. However, there are some open research issues related to security that need researcher’s and academia’s attention. Attack plane is introduced due to the fact that control logic is separated from tje data forwarding plane. This paper presents a simple authentication mechanism using hash table, cryptographic hash function and REST API for access points (APs) and applications to secure the communications. The unauthorized applications are not allowed to access network resources. Additionally, unauthorized access points are not allowed to communicate with other network elements. The wireless topology is emulated and tje proposed application is tested to validate the results. The application generates the report about total authorized and unauthorized access points in the topology. The application is allowed to run at all times in the network and alert the administrator about malicious device. This malicious device and application is not allowed to communicate with other network element or access network resources. Performance evaluation has been carried out by measruing the time required to run the application for varying number of Access Points (APs).