Patent ID: 7350077

Claim:
A method for establishing a secure association for a mobile node with a network, the steps comprising: associating with an access point; authenticating the mobile node using an extensible authentication protocol by the access point; establishing a network session key; and wherein the network session key is used to establish a key request key and a base transient key; wherein the base transient key is used as a counter mode key generator to provide fresh pairwise transient keys; wherein the key request key is used by the mobile node to prove it has proper authorization for a session; wherein roaming after establishing the network session key comprises: incrementing a rekey number, producing an incremented rekey number, generating a fresh pairwise transient key based on the incremented rekey number; sending a reassociation request to a new access point, the reassociation request containing the incremented rekey number, and verifying the new access point is using the fresh pairwise transient key based on the incremented rekey number.