Mass subscriber management

Abstract

An authentication and mass subscriber management technique is provided by employing a key table derived as a subset of a larger key pool, a network edge device, and authentication tokens attached on both the network edge device and on a subscriber's computing device. The network edge device and subscriber's computing device are provided with secure, tamper-resistant network keys for encrypting all transactions across the wired/wireless segment between supplicant (subscriber) and authenticator (network edge device). In an embodiment of the invention, a secure, secret user key is shared between a number of subscribers based upon commonalities between serial numbers of those subscribers' tokens. In another embodiment of the invention, a unique session key is generated for each subscriber even though multiple subscribers connected to the same network connection point might have identical pre-stored secret keys.

1 . A method for authenticating a communications device attempting to access a network comprising the steps of:
 receiving an identifier associated with a communications device;   calculating a number based on a computation of said identifier;   selecting a cryptographic key specified by said number from a key table; and   performing an authentication technique that embodies said cryptographic key to determine whether said communications device is permitted to access a network.   
   
   
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