DOMINO: a system to detect greedy behavior in IEEE 802.11 hotspots

The proliferation of hotspots based on IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs brings the promise of seamless Internet access from a large number of public locations. However, as the number of users soars, so does the risk of possible misbehavior; to protect themselves, wireless ISPs already make use of a number of security mechanisms, and require mobile stations to authenticate themselves at the Access Points (APs). However, IEEE 802.11 works properly only if the stations also respect the MAC protocol. We show in this paper that a greedy user can substantially increase his share of bandwidth, at the expense of the other users, by slightly modifying the driver of his network adapter. We explain how easily this can be performed, in particular with the new generation of adapters. We then present DOMINO (System for Detection Of greedy behavior in the MAC layer of IEEE 802.11 public NetwOrks), a piece of software to be installed in the Access Point. DOMINO can detect and identify greedy stations, without requiring any modification of the standard protocol at the AP and without revealing its own presence. We illustrate these concepts by simulation results and by the description of our prototype.

[1]  Ray Jain,et al.  The art of computer systems performance analysis - techniques for experimental design, measurement, simulation, and modeling , 1991, Wiley professional computing.

[2]  Kevin R. Fall,et al.  Ns: notes and documentation , 1997 .

[3]  George C. Polyzos,et al.  TCP and UDP performance over a wireless LAN , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[4]  Hari Balakrishnan,et al.  An analysis of short-term fairness in wireless media access protocols (poster session) , 2000, SIGMETRICS '00.

[5]  Joe F. Chicharo,et al.  Unfairness and capture behaviour in 802.11 adhoc networks , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Conference on Communications. ICC 2000. Global Convergence Through Communications. Conference Record.

[6]  Mary Baker,et al.  Mitigating routing misbehavior in mobile ad hoc networks , 2000, MobiCom '00.

[7]  Mary Baker,et al.  Analysis of a local-area wireless network , 2000, MobiCom '00.

[8]  Vaduvur Bharghavan,et al.  Achieving MAC layer fairness in wireless packet networks , 2000, MobiCom '00.

[9]  J.-Y. Le Boudec,et al.  Toward self-organized mobile ad hoc networks: the terminodes project , 2001, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[10]  Ramón Agüero,et al.  Behavior of UDP-based applications over IEEE 802.11 wireless networks , 2001, 12th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications. PIMRC 2001. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8598).

[11]  Srinivasan Seshan,et al.  Selfish behavior and stability of the internet:: a game-theoretic analysis of TCP , 2002, SIGCOMM '02.

[12]  Paramvir Bahl,et al.  Characterizing user behavior and network performance in a public wireless LAN , 2002, SIGMETRICS '02.

[13]  Jerzy Konorski,et al.  Multiple Access in Ad-Hoc Wireless LANs with Noncooperative Stations , 2002, NETWORKING.

[14]  Madhav V. Marathe,et al.  Analyzing the short-term fairness of IEEE 802.11 in wireless multi-hop radio networks , 2002, Proceedings. 10th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunications Systems.

[15]  David Kotz,et al.  Analysis of a Campus-Wide Wireless Network , 2002, MobiCom '02.

[16]  Martin Heusse,et al.  Performance anomaly of 802.11b , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[17]  William A. Arbaugh,et al.  Real 802.11 Security: Wi-Fi Protected Access and 802.11i , 2003 .

[18]  Levente Buttyán,et al.  Stimulating Cooperation in Self-Organizing Mobile Ad Hoc Networks , 2003, Mob. Networks Appl..

[19]  Nitin H. Vaidya,et al.  Detection and handling of MAC layer misbehavior in wireless networks , 2003, 2003 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2003. Proceedings..

[20]  Markus Jakobsson,et al.  A charging and rewarding scheme for packet forwarding in multi-hop cellular networks , 2003, MobiHoc '03.

[21]  Stefan Savage,et al.  802.11 Denial-of-Service Attacks: Real Vulnerabilities and Practical Solutions , 2003, USENIX Security Symposium.

[22]  A. Girotra,et al.  Performance Analysis of the IEEE 802 . 11 Distributed Coordination Function , 2005 .