Slashdot Mirror
Working Toward Roaming For Wireless ISPs
hrhsoleil writes "In the category of: This seems like a no-brainer and why-didn't-someone-do-it-before,
according to SearchMobileComputing, the Internet Protocol Detail Record Organization (IPDR) is pushing a set of specifications that would allow users to roam among different providers' hot spots. IPDR is an industry group that addresses billing issues for wireless carriers -- they've got the Wi-Fi Alliance, Gric Communications, and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association backing them up on this one so it might actually get off the ground. It's about time that wireless ISPs get their act together and make roaming possible. If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?"
It's great that wireless Internet is moving in this direction, even if it's going to take some time since wireless ISPs aren't interconnected yet. But I'm sure as with many wireless phone companies, providers will charge fifty cents a nanosecond to roam on another provider's network. If your wireless network doesn't reach you, just keep a look out for mysterious symbols on the sidewalk.
The real problem with roaming and Wi-Fi lies with customers who try to cheat the system.
I could quite easily open an account with the cheapest wISP I could find (say the caniadian one so I can save because of the exchange rate) then use a local wISP for access.
This is quite bad for wISP as they would introduce free market competition where they once held a monopoly.
The only was I can see this working is that if you are roming you have a limited service, say access to only port 80. Which would stop people from trying to abuse the roming system.
There is no god
Agreed, it certainly would be good if you could simply bounce around providers networks. Lets just hope that they get a decent spec that works well - i can just see random packets heading off in all different directions!
story here
You can use your bank card anywhere, because it's a distributed Universal ID system.
Your account includes a bank identifier, and an account identifier, which uniquely points to your pile of cash.
To allow a similar system w/ Wireless, you'd need some kind of 'accepted' universal ID system.... and we've a disussion of where this goes a few months back (see Liberty Alliance and MS's .net Passport)
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
"If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?"
I just hope that they don't charge me $2.50 everytime I want to use a someone else's hotspot.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Good point. Also consider that open access points are avaliable out the wazoo.. its proably easier and cheaper just to leech bandwidth off the clueless Linksys user than it is to try to find some other ISP's wireless access when you're out and about.
Here's the core problem with interoperability...
Assume that the average contract is $40 a month. (About what it is now) Assume that a big company has a sizable saturation in an area.
Now, assume that a competitor comes into an area and wants to charge $30 per month. Interoperability means that this new competitor can provide the same service as the bigger company yet charge a lower price.
So, there must be fees that the smaller competitor must pay to the larger company in order for this to work. Do you think the larger company will be cheap? Do you think that they will *really* let the smaller company charge $30 and still make a profit?
Whatever this deal is, it'd better be mighty strong.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
...because most (W)ISPs don't charge per minute and 99% of all ISP customers would not use an ISP that did.
.com recrations of past bad business plans, thank you very much.
The rest of the economic calculations is left as an exercise to the reader, but here's a hint:
($30/((60*24)*30))/5 where the number "5" represents a median number of WISPs/Hotspots across which a consumer will roam. The end number is less than 1% of 1 cent per minute. The electricity to store the transactions, the paper to print the bill and the customer service representitive to explain the service to the customer cost several orders of maginitude more than will ever be recooped. Stop wasting our time with stuipid post
And if all that weren't enough, there's probably an open access point available near by the doesn't charge.
If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?"
Maybe because bank machines are less easily hacked/abused/cracked than most wireless systems?
We've seen cracked or hijacked cellphones, don't you think that this would be done for WiFi?
Moreover, think of the content: crackers would likely be using these hotspots for pr0n, warez, spam, etc. Actually, some already are, but it could get worse unless some really good security is implemented in this system.
Its a great idea, but as in the case of every good idea, its already being done, and has a patent.
see:
6,633,761
6,665,537
Probably more but I'm too lazy to look.
www.bleepyou.com
On some devices, this is already done. From the article:
When's 802.11* going to support on-the-fly connection migration? Why can't I walk around a large area and switch between base stations automatically and invisibly as reception changes? That would go a long way towards making those "you're not tied down to anywhere"-type commercials a reality.
Granted, without the billing (because they feel that internet access should be free for their community), but many Dutch universities and research institutions together with SURFnet (the National Research and Education Network) have developed a roaming solution already. Based on IEEE 802.1x, EAP-TTLS and RADIUS it allows for seemless roaming between the participants.
This WiFi roaming has recently been extended and now institutions in Portugal and Croatia are joining as wel.
There are a couple ways they could approach this. One of which is to have a login page at each hot spot (the way they do now) and have users select their provider and login with their normal account information. This approach would be acceptable to me. The other option however, would require a Daemon/Service/whatnot to be running on the device that was roaming to try and make the process more seamless. While it would be nice to be able to walk into any place with a hotspot, whip out my PDA, and start catching up on my daily news without any login hassles, I can see device support being a problem. Specifically, I can see companies trying to keep the software for this closed (in spite of a published open standard) purely because they see open source/protocols as making it easier for people to cheat the system (however wrong they may be). WiFi is almost useless to me if I can't get to it from the Linux side of things.
Just my $0.02 ramblings.
This post brought to you by the guy in the apartments above this coffee house with non-WEP enabled AP.
As the founder of a free community hotspot , I wanna say, if giant corporations are willing to provide web services for free, because it's the only way to get people to come, why wouldn't we want to provide wireless access to those web services for free?
Basically, I don't see that the pay-to-play model of the wired ISP is the necessary model for wireless ISPs. In fact I think it's a doomed model. People are going to gravitate to the free hookups. It's not just cheaper, it's easier, and easier always wins.
It's not time to figure out how to get roaming on paid wireless ISPs. It's time to figure out how to stop charging for it.
"If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?" Well you're comparing public and private and wired and wireless networks, Apples and Oranges. Banks use a private network between each other to communicate transactions and when you use the competitors ATM you get charged a service fee. Part of that goes towards using that private network. And from a buisness sense, it wouldnt be all that great to have your customers wandering around on other's networks yet you're still responsible for whatever they're doing.
The lead into this article says the groups behind this standard are the Wi-Fi Alliance, Gric Communications, and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. The Wi-Fi Alliance has been unable to get traction under its branded Wi-Fi Zones program from venues that would rather just show the network they're part of; GRIC is the increasingly distant number 2 player in corporate aggregated resale (i.e., no hotspots, just reselling hotspots); and the Canadian group has very very few hotspots in Canada. The leading Canadian WISP, FatPort, isn't part of this proposal.
More likely, the GSM Association's roaming standards group that drafted a long document (referenced here in June 2003) on handling WISP roaming for hotspots (with members on the committee from some of the world's largest cell operators) will become the backend.
Or, iPass, GRIC's rival, which will gross about $200 million in 2003 after a very successful public offering this year, will make its clearinghouse standard, which requires standardized authentication, the de facto method of fee settlement and roaming across networks. iPass has 10,000 hotspots under contract now, including T-Mobile, Wayport, and other major networks worldwide.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
hopefully they'll avoid the fine-print and confusing fee structure of cellphone roaming charges (in the US) that have given the cellphone industry a bad name.
Does this mean I can set up a hot spot at my home or business and charge for access? Sounds like a great way to earn a little extra cash...
On the flip side, what if there are two different hot spots covering the same area, but which have different surcharges? Does this roaming system include a way of determining such things? What about a way of selecting the cheaper connection, or forcing a more expensive but better connection, or automatically rejecting connections to hot spots with surcharges that are too high?
The business model here would be for nationwide service providers to pay a modest fee to individual hotspots based upon how many of the providors customers succesfully use the hotspots. care and maintenance of the hotspot is done solely at location, and aside from billing, would be the bulk of the expenses for the providor.
It would be in the best interests of the hotspots to make them accessible to as many providors as possible, including independents.
The problems would be:
-- The hotspots would get money from providors, and no longer have much of an incentive to provide service for free to individuals not affiliated.
-- Both the provider and maintainer of the hotspot would want to keep records of who's using the hotspot.... for billing.
-- Stupid marketing people will think the business model works best as a per-minute or per-megabyte fee, and will fail conssitently until someone wises up and makes things consistently all-you-can-eat
--It wont be free
The benifits would be
-- Your wifi connection would work, more often than not, as seemless hand-off technology would be in the best interest of everyone involved
-- connections would develop a consistency as a multitude of providers do their damdest to make sure they can connect to as many hotspots as possible, and hotspots doing their best to connect to as many providers as they can.
-- Connecting gets easier for the user as everyone wants you using it as much as posible.
--Lots of people make money.
Why couldn't a handful of ISPs get together for this concept via dialup? You could log in with a username (during the dialin process) of something like and it'd be routed towards my Earthlink account for metering, etc., and be able to dial in from virtually any ISP's local number.
Just like someone said with ATMs, you can go to nearly any ATM in the world and use your card to get cash. I do this when I travel internationally, much easier and quicker than screwing with Traveler's Cheques. Same goes with cell phones. These days, if you can get a signal, regardless of whose it is, you can make and receive calls.
The way this was supposed to work from the X500 and LDAP people, using ASN.1 syntax, is 'uid=joe,dc=mac,dc=com' would tell you to forward the authentication lookup to "mac.com" as "joe". I could theoretically do this from an AP owned and operated by dc=speakeasy,dc=net. The authentication thingie on the AP would ask its favorite directory for authentication service, and that directory would do referrals.
All you need to know is that you are "joe" at "mac.com" and the password to your Keychain(TM). If you like something other than MacOS X, then you will have to remember your WiFi password in addition to any other passwords :) .
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
The banks had something of a head start in doing this, since they already had inter-bank facilities in place (for things like wire transfers and check clearing).
Also, when ATMs first became popular, the banks were very hesitant to allow the use of machines belonging to other institutions. At least in the US, it was the success of the NYCE network in and around New York City that really broke the ice.
Another interesting historical tidbit: when the banks first started to introduce ATMs, some of them went to a couple of big supermarket chains, and offered to put in the machines for a fee paid by the supermarket. The supermarkets said, "Guess again. We'll put in our machines, and charge you a fee when your customers use them." (At that time the largest holders of currency in the US were not banks, but supermarkets. I don't know if that's still true.)
You all need to get the message about what
IPDR really is- it is a means of altering
the internet protocol to enable per service
and per packet charging beyond anyone's current
imaginations.
I'm sure you can figure out the implications-
no more flat monthly rates
nickling and diming to death for everything
Need I say more?
We need client-side apps that can handle the complexity of multiple networks. As the WISPs get their server apps together, they'll offer roaming and competing logins in simultaneous geographical areas, in different bands/channels. The overlaps will provide seamless coverage, failover redundancy, and nightmarish complexity. The WISPs will be fully armed with apps to manage their complexity. But if all my client can do is login, and get a bill later, then I'm at the mercy of the providers. I need a client app that tracks all the complex offerings, presenting me with filtered, optimized choices when available, or just logging me in by a formula that *I* choose. And keeping a transaction trail. When the bills come, my dream client SW will diff the transaction logs, and submit complaints that I merely review and "sign". And traffic analysis will let me shop for better plans based on my actual usage history.
Where is the platform for this transaction agent for my "phone"? Let's get cracking in the apps, before the WISPs have completely 0wn3d the space, and we're at their mercy.
--
make install -not war
Isn't this the same thing that Boingo is doing?
Meanwhile, no one seems to be using the T-Mobile/Starbuck's WiFi service. I tried it. Beyond the expense, I was irritated that I had to log on and off using Internet Explorer, and there appeared to be no way to upgrade or downgrade your account without having to call the 800 number and trust your luck that the person answering the phone would actually do what you needed done. Without screwing it up.
I tried another for pay service in an independent cafe with pretty much the same results.
Face it, unless the government steps in and forces independent free wireless ISPs to charge a fee for service, I can't imagine for pay WISPs making enough money to survive, let alone roam.
At least in Seattle
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
802.11x devices have a unique 6byte MAC, like any ethernet card. If packets or ACKs were signed with a key generated on the MAC, the traffic could be controlled. That would allow multiple devices each to receive unique traffic for a single user, like their phone, car and sunglasses.
--
make install -not war
Telecom carriers have been aggregating microcharges into periodic macropayments for a century. You don't print a bill for each minute, if you even print one at all for most WISP customers. The grandparet post is stupid, ignoring the last 20 years of unbundling telcos' network charges from access charges. But you've got some kind of ".com burst" mentality of "can't at any cost".
--
make install -not war
If my subscribers wander from Fort Greene out to your museum, staying online all the while, and you don't send me a bill, but my servers handle all the load that keeps them online, we've just synergistically enabled each other. Your budget is subsidized by my corporate taxes (and museum admissions), so it all makes sense to me.
--
make install -not war
I can't see myself paying $30 a month for cafe and hotel coverage in two years even if the roaming is seamless. EDGE is available nation-wide now (at ~168kbps its perfectly fine for email), EV-DO and EV-DV will up the speeds further, and then there's WiMax coming along with city-wide range for broadband. My hope is in a few years I'll just pay my garbage/sewer/WiMax utility and the roaming agreements will be between cities. Then I'll ditch the DSL and cell phone.
To solve all this stuff you need things to be addressed at multiple layers.
That's why the IEEE has started 802.21.
Evil people are out to get you.
Such systems should include the possibility of negotiating rates on the fly. The mobile device should be programmed with upper prices for particular levels of service. Then, for each unit of service purchased a negotiation takes place. If the ISP is not busy the price is low. If the ISP is close to saturation the price is high. If there are multiple ISPs to choose from market competition occurs as everyone negotiates to determine the price. This would result in a balance between coverage and what people are willing to pay.
Hey, I always troll as BoldAC (AC)
You stole my trolling nick.
However, got a chuckle out of your post... so Merry Whatever_holiday_you_celebrate to you as well.
AC
The city government in Atlanta has a very similar program called FastPass. The idea is to get hotels, restaurants,etc to provide wireless service independantly but connect to the FastPass service. Subscribers to the FastPass network then can access any one of those sites, including the airport, the convention center and several hotels. You can get an account by the hour, for several days, or as a monthly subscription. When a subscriber to the service logs onto a independently provided network, the provider gets a portion of the Fastpass connect fee, determined by the time spent on the network (or maybe bandwidth?) Seems like a winning idea to me. Wish more places would sign up to become a part of the network though.
harmonious design
that's how many dialup ISPs have been reselling coast to coast (and beyond) roaming for several years now, utilizing 3rd party dialups.
When ATM's were first started up you could only use the one's from your bank with your card. After a few false starts things got a lot better.
You can't always expect a "new" technology to have all of the answers the moment it starts up.
Many of the wireless access providers complain about not making money. They don't understand I don't want to drive to Starbucks for access, I want it where ever I am (including at home) when I need it.
RAN
Most small to mid-size ISPs have offered this very service for years now. They utilize the phone lines of a 3rd party provider of dialup POPs, such as MegaPOP and authentications are handled using RADIUS servers.
2) Establish ssh PPP tunnel (or IPSEC) to your home system.
3) Route all traffic through your home system.
It kinda requires a high speed link at home though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What's the point? People don't use 802.11 in their cars unless they are wardriving. If you've ever gone, each signal is out of range within a matter of seconds. The range just isn't good enough to use it in a moving vehicle.
Usually when people are using a hotspot, they are sitting on a park bench or at a coffee shop. I can't see what purpose it serves to add roaming capability to something which typically has a maximum range of a couple hundred yards without using a directional antenna.
Maybe if the range was a couple of miles, this would be useful, but not in it's current state.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Most people's ISP won't let you send via their SMTP server unless you're connected via their servers. If you're roaming and connected via some third party ISP, you won't be able to send mail via thier SMTP server. This is already a problem for people using dialup roaming like iPass.
Will this perhaps cause a rise in authenticated SMTP (allowing people to send mail regardless of from where they're connected, while still addressing ISPs spam-control concerns)?
Do people have better solutions to SMTP while roaming??
Because your not their customer?
We never intended developing 802.11x for the wide deployment it has reached. We have created a monster. Other solutions geared toward speed, mobility and security are by far more superior and feasible. Sprint and Nextel are waiting on the FCC to approve specrum usage in the MMDS frequencies that will allow for ultra-high speed and mobility. www.nextnetwireless.com
Gimme that booze you little pumpkin pie hair cutted freak!
I have an applescript for OS 9 that will speak the names of all unencrypted wireless nodes in the area and indicate good signal.
Slashdot does not let me post the code (BELIEVE ME I tried).
Email me if you with to play with it.
zavpublic at mac.com
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
My local ISP, www.sonic.net is currently marketing a scheme to try to encourage us not to freely share our DSL-connected WAP's. We take the last IP of our four assigned #'s and hook our WAP to that number. A valid sonic.net account holder driving by logs in via the supplied VPN client and then they can go online. No charge other than their normal monthly charges for their account. Anyone not able to log in only gets the ISP's webpage. If another sonic.net subscriber logs through your WAP, you get some token kickback, like $0.50 per day, up to some maximum. The payback barely compensates for having to log in to use my own WAP, but I could see if all ISP's did this, the next step would be to interconnect and have true roaming...the accounting would already be in place.
I don't know about you but I use Mobile ip client from Birdstep and cisco. This solves the problem for IP layer roaming (Administrative roaming is another question).
I currently have a node listed on nodedb.com, mainly just for fun. Its been up and down lately, but I just find it cool that some people can look up where to get free internet access if its needed. Unfortunately, there are always the people out there doing it for bad things. When you setup a node on their site, a contact email is listed for people with questions, etc.. Well my node has been down for awhile now, but some person keeps on bugging me about when my it will be up again. They seem to email me like every week, and at some point you have to start wondering why they are so interested in using it. I say chances are its either A) Hacking or B) Spamming. If I put a Wireless AP back up, with public access, it sure as hell will block all access to port 25 incoming, outgoing, local, remote. Blocked. Period. End of story. Find another spamhole you bastards!
Seesh... Perhaphs we could go link to the source; first hand information is almost always more reliable
Because the organization providing support on that machine is allowed to charge a fee to out-of-network users. Is there a mechanism in place to charge you $1 if you roam into another ISP's area? No, there is not.
If this were allowed, you could just have crappy ISPs who dont support their equipment make all the money, while their users roam into networks with higher costs and maintenance, but a strangely shrinking customer base...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
It's bad enough that any child molesting pervert can enjoy near-total anonymity thanks to war-driving or simply visiting a McCafe sponsorted hot-spot... Now spammers and other Internet scumbags will enjoy total freedom of momement as they slowly pillage what usefulness there is left in the Internet...
Damn it.
In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"