Secure VPN deployment in GPRS mobile network

The growth of the Internet and the success of mobile networks suggest that the next trend will be an increas-ing 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 ana-lyzed. The VPN deployment is based on the IPsec proto-col 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 differ-ent technologies are elaborated. Finally, a qualitative evaluation of the proposed VPN scheme and the outline of an alternative approach for future work are pre-sented