Central Manager: A Solution to Avoid Denial Of Service Attacks for Wireless LANs

802.1x is a security protocol based on the frame structure of 802.11. It attempts to provide strong authentication, access control, and WEP key management for Wireless LANs. Unfortunately, 802.1x misses its goals in access control denial of service (DoS) attacks. Currently, there are no IEEE approved ways to solve the security hole. We propose a Central Manager (CM) not only to take the responsibility of an authentication server, but also to add functionality to prevent denial of service attacks. We analyze the performance of WLANs under DoS attacks and demonstrate the correctness of the CM solution through simulations. From the simulations, we conclude the CM solution can efficiently avoid DoS attacks and alleviate the effects from the DoS attacks.