VPN over a wireless infrastructure : evaluation and performance analysis

Abstract

This thesis presents the analysis and experimental results for an evaluation of the performance and Quality of Service (QoL) levels of a virtual private network( QoL) levels of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) implementation of an IEEE 802.11b wireless infrastructure. The VPN tunnelling protocol considered for the above study is IP security (IPSec). The main focus of the research is to identify the major performance limitations and their underlying causes for such VPN implementations under study. The experimentation and data collection involved in the study spans over a number of platforms to suit a range of practical VPN implementations over a wireless medium. The collected data includes vital QoS and performance measures such as the application throughput, packet loss, jitter, and round-trip delay. Once the baseline measure is established, a series of experiments are conducted to analyse the behaviour of a single IPSec VPN operating over an IEEE 802.11b infrastructure, after which the experimentation is extended by investigating the trends of the performance metrics of a simultaneously multiple VPN setup. The overall results and analysis of the investigation concludes that the CPU processing power, payload data size, packet generation rate and the geographical distance are critical factors affecting the performance of such VPN tunnel implementations. Furthermore, it is believed that these results may give vital clues for enhancing and achieving optimal performance and QoS levels for VPN applications over WLANs

Date of Award	2005
Original language	English