Subject: [MOBILE-IP] Are Mobile-Home Authentication's optional ?

From: Woo-June Kim <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:32:53 +0900

Hi All,

I've been looking at the challeng/response (v09) draft and I noticed that it seems to imply that the Mobile-Home authentication extension is optional. It says 

"..........
   Since the Challenge extension, and the authentication extension that
   is used by the Mobile Node to satisfy the challenge, both follow
   the Mobile-Home Authentication extension whenever the latter is
   present, the Foreign Agent MAY remove the Challenge Extension and
   the applicable authentication from the Registration Request without
   disturbing the authentication value computed by the Mobile Node for
   use by the Home Agent.
........"

i.e. "whenever the latter is pressent", where latter is the MN-HA authentication.

but in the rfc2002 (and its later version rfc2002-bis) it says

"....
3.2. Authentication

   Each mobile node, foreign agent, and home agent MUST be able to
   support a mobility security association for mobile entities, indexed
   by their SPI and IP address.  In the case of the mobile node, this
   must be its Home Address.  See Section 5.1 for requirements for
   support of authentication algorithms.  Registration messages between
   a mobile node and its home agent MUST be authenticated with the
   Mobile-Home Authentication Extension (Section 3.5.2).  This Extension
   immediately follows all non-authentication Extensions, except those
   foreign agent-specific Extensions which may be added to the message
   after the mobile node computes the authentication.....
"

Could someone point out which is the correct one. 

To me even if FAC is used, I don't quite see how it nullfies the need for the MN-HA authentication field.

cheers

Woojune Kim,
Senior Engineer
Samsung Electronics Ltd. 
tel : +82-342-779-8526
hp : +82-11-368-7480
e-mail : [email-masked]

---

From: "Charles E. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 22:03:19 -0800

Hello,

> the MN-HA authentication field.

The Challenge specification was written after the MN-NAI specification,
and the MN-NAI specification allows a MN-AAA authentication extension
to take the place of the MN-HA authentication extension.

Regards,
Charlie P.