FATIMA: A Firewall-Aware Transparent Internet Mobility Architecture

Ubiquitous communication will be one of the paradigms for the next decades. Mobile communication systems experience tremendous growth rates, Internet access is integrated in vehicles, pedestrians use Internet-ready mobile phones. This use of the Internet demands for a highly reliable and secure system, especially when used in nonacademical environments like remote offices, e-commerce, or traffic telematics. Today’s Internet, even with the mobility extension Mobile IP, has not been designed with private addresses, firewalls, network address translation, quality of service etc. in mind. Several optimisations already exist— however, quite often security is neglected. This paper proposes the firewall-aware transparent internet mobility architecture FATIMA, which integrates security functionality but is transparent to existing Mobile IP implementations. All security critical functions are concentrated in a firewall, all controll messages are authenticated, and micromobility is supported. Corporate networks with private addresses are supported seamlessly, and further extensions allow for the use of dynamic home addresses and quality of