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?"

Comments

Roaming fees

[andyrut]

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.

Universal ID

[mystik]

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)

Re:Universal ID

[mr_mischief]

You don't need a universally unique ID for the device.

What you need is a universally unique ID for the user. There's only one person with your email address. RADIUS realms uses the '@' to separate username from the realm. Since a realm is often the same as a domain anyway (although not always), this gives rise to an interesting idea.

Dialup ISPs have been doing limited roaming internally or among a limited number of ISPs partnered specifically for a larger roaming area for years. It's generally done with RADIUS using realms.

All a RADIUS server needs to do is to refer a request for a user in a realm it doesn't handle to the proper other RADIUS server, then forward back the response. Normally you must configure a RADIUS server with which other server is authoritative for which realm. There's no reason there couldn't be a TXT record in DNS that lists the authoritative RADIUS server for a realm that's the same as a domain name.

The other part is a bit more tricky -- the RADIUS server that is authoritative for the domain generally requires that the requesting device (an access server or another RADIUS server usually, but it could be a Linux box or whatever else that wants to speak RADIUS) be listed in advance, and that it shares a plaintext secret used for shared-key encryption.

Billing for usage-based access is often done straight from RADIUS login, logout, and traffic records anyway, so this part is easy.

What would need to be done is for public-key encryption to be used between devices (at least from oen RADIUS box to another or as an option -- it may be hard to get the firmware on certain access servers to do this) and for the authoritative RADIUS servers for one domain to be allowed to authenticate against another domain. With these fairly simple updates to the venerable protocol, it could allow universal roaming not just among dialups and among wireless ISPs, but even across those two types of entities. Then you still have the problem of getting deadbeat hotspot owners and ISP owners to pay for their roaming customers...

Note that cell companies don't all roam on everyone else's networks. There are a handful of networks, and there's coverage in most places by any particular carrier or at least one of their roaming partners. Some cell companies don't do roaming -- if you're off their network, you're out of luck.

So what's really needed is for ISPs and hotspot providers to sign mutual roaming contracts in the model adopted by the cell phone providers. Then, no changes to RADIUS would even be required.

It's often the fact that when you go to reinvent a wheel, it's simply because you didn't bother to see if that wheel existed already. This wheel's been in use a long time. Don't reinvent it.

Fees?

[Stingr]

"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.

Equality

[mcrbids]

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

Re:Wireless ISP's problem with this

[cleetus]

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.

In this case the local WISP would surcharge you and your cheap WISP would pass the surcharge right along to you, perhaps with a handling fee to boot.

This not only prevents the scenario you speak about, but also allows the installation costs of a hot spot to be borne more by those who use that hotspot. If it's hard to get wireless into a particular area for whatever reason, trust me, whatever ISP installs a hotspot will cover that cost or they won't let you on.

cleetus

Re:Wireless ISP's problem with this

[corbettw]

The real problem with roaming and Wi-Fi lies with customers who try to cheat the system.

I'm not a cell phone expert, but I'm pretty sure a portion of the roaming charges you pay on your cell phone get passed on to the owner of the network you're roaming on. For instance, if you're a T-Mobile customer in a location with no T-Mobile cell, and you roam through an AT&T cell, part of the extra money T-Mobile charges you gets passed on to AT&T. A lot of big cell providers will negotiate roaming charges between themselves, so they can offer lower rates to their customers, and be more competitive than smaller cell providers.

The same would likely happen here. WISPs like Boingo and such would pass on some of the roaming charges to their competitors to gain access to their networks, allowing the customer to roam in the first place. And most likely, they would negotiate for better prices depending on how large their own network is (the more hotspots they operate, the less they have to pay someone else to use theirs). So while competition would drive prices down (which is a good thing), noone will be getting anything for free. At least not until the WISPs have paid off their investment into their infrastructure.

Watch out for those patents

[louissypher]

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.

WiFi roaming is reality already

[JohanV]

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.

Free is the way to go here.

[matt_morgan]

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.

Re:Free is the way to go here.

[op00to]

Provide me the free bandwidth and legal immunity from the users of the hotspot, and I'll give you a free hotspot.

Apples and Oranges?

[BeemanH2O]

"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 groups behind it have no hotspots, however

[eggboard]

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.