Annual Report 2010 - Fachgruppe Informatik an der RWTH Aachen ...

Management. The project is co-funded by the European Commission under the FP7 ‘Social
Sciences and Humanities’ programme.
For further information please visit http://www.china-eu-standards.org.
PISA: The Peer-to-Peer Wi-Fi Internet Sharing Architecture
Tobias Heer, Klaus Wehrle
The proliferation of broadband Internet connections has lead to an almost pervasive coverage
of densely populated areas with private and commercial wireless access points. To leverage
this coverage, sharing of access points as Internet uplinks among users has first become
popular in communities of individuals and has recently been adopted as a business model by
several companies.
However, existing implementations and proposals suffer from the security risks of directly
providing Internet access to strangers. Access control at the wireless routers only solves part
of the problem because as soon as un-trusted parties (e.g., subcontractors or private persons)
operate part of the community network, privacy, confidentiality, and repudiation are hard to
provide. Moreover, if the group of mobile users is dynamic (e.g., open access for everyone)
legal issues arise for providers of the access points. We are working on the P2P Wi-Fi Internet
Sharing Architecture PISA, which eliminates these risks and drawbacks by introducing secure
tunneling, cryptographic identities, and certificates as primary security concepts. PISA will
offer nomadic users the same security that they expect from a wired Internet connection at
home. With this combination of key features, PISA can form an essential basis for secure Wi-
Fi access in citywide or global Wi-Fi sharing scenarios.
Mobile ACcess: Mobile and City-wide Communication Environment for Secure Internet
Services
Tobias Heer, René Hummen, Nicolai Viol, Hanno Wirtz, Klaus Wehrle
Municipal Wi-Fi networks aim at providing broad Internet access and selected network
services to citizens, travelers, and civil servants. Such services can range from web sites to
interactive tourist guides to remote meter read-outs and traffic monitoring. While establishing
such networks is financially challenging for municipalities, Wi-Fi-sharing communities
accomplish good coverage and ubiquitous access by capitalizing on the dense deployment of
private access points in urban areas. However, lack of trust, security, and openness make
community models unsuitable for municipal Wi-Fi projects.
The project Mobile ACcess is a collaboration of the LuFG i4, Informatik 8, and 7 partners
including the cities of Aachen and Monschau. It is a joint effort to show the feasibility and
practicability of a city-wide network consisting of individual access networks united by a
166