Secure VPN Deployment in GPRS Mobile

The growth of the Internet and the success of mobile networks suggest that the next trend will be an increasing demand for mobile access to Internet applications. It is therefore increasingly important that mobile radio networks support these applications in an efficient manner. Moreover, in such a hybrid environment, where clients are connecting to ever growing networks in an ad-hoc fashion, the security requirements of such practices become even more important. An end-to-end Virtual Private Network (VPN) deployment scenario over the GPRS mobile network is presented and analyzed. The VPN deployment is based on the IPsec protocol suite. A specific protocol configuration of the IPsec is proposed, in order to make it operational on a mobile network environment. The potential incompatibility problems that may arise from the integration of different technologies are elaborated. Finally, a qualitative evaluation of the proposed VPN scheme and the outline of an alternative approach for future work are presented.