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Wi-Fi networks primed for mobile roamers
Julian Bright, Informa Telecoms & Media
With newly converged standards in place, infrastructure vendors and Wi-Fi hotspot operators are moving quickly to enable public access networks for seamless roaming with mobile phone networks.
Nomadix, supplier of network devices and interconnect services for Wi-Fi hotspots, announced its public access gateways now support European Telecoms Standards Institute (ETSI) standards for Seamless Access, which augment Wi-Fi Alliance certification and comply with 3GPP and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards.
“We're starting to see a demand from our installed base to enable other non-Web-based devices, primarily phones. But that can expand into games stations and other non-traditional laptop-type applications,” said Scott Zumbahlen, director of marketing for Nomadix.
“It starts with the infrastructure. Our infrastructure needs to be enabled to support these applications before the service providers can roll them out,” he added.
“There is a large number of hotspot networks that are becoming ready” for seamless roaming with cellular networks, said Dan Dahle, senior strategic architect at Intel.
Nomadix and Intel are two of some 25 companies that have been working with the IEEE, Wi-Fi Alliance, 3GPP and GSMA to harmonize different authentication and roaming standards set by IEEE, IETF and 3GPP. Intel helped lead harmonization effort.
Dahle noted that Intel is part of the informally organized International Roaming Access Protocols Group (IRAP), which worked to “harmonize the standards from those different standards bodies into a common profile, a subset of all the different choices and options you have, including the RADIUS specifications by IETF.”
RADIUS provides an authentication and accounting framework for Wi-Fi networks.
The ETSI standards, TS183019 and TS183020, were ratified in December 2005 and made available last month. They address issues such as the fact that there was previously no common way of getting authenticated on a Wi-Fi network using browser pages. Security based on 802.11x and Wi-Fi protected access also make up a large focus of the standards.
“The problem took a basic solution but also required a lot of integration across industries,” said Dahle, who emphasized that the two ETSI standards are not actually new standards but represent a conglomeration of what went before.
Though the ETSI standards focused on 3GPP and the GSM world, that doesn't mean CDMA vendors and operators have been left out. “The CDMA world is kind of interesting because they've built all of their standards around IETF protocols. The key thing between WiFi networks is that they have WiFi for the radio link and they typically use IETF protocols, or IP protocols—RADIUS—behind that. And CDMA actually has RADIUS for its authentication protocols. So CDMA networks really fit into this as well,” noted Dahle.
Meanwhile, seamless roaming efforts continue on the device side as well. On May 17. hotspot aggregator Boingo Wireless announced its Embedded Wi-Fi Toolkit, an open source software package that enables developers to integrate Wi-Fi connection management to any Wi-Fi hot spot into devices such as dual-mode phones, VoIP handsets, mobile gaming consoles and other portable devices.
Commenting on the announcement, Tom Maguire, vice president of global marketing at Kyocera Wireless, stated, “Our BREW-based dual-mode prototype phone uses Boingo's toolkit to enable global Wi-Fi roaming. It makes for a very powerful demonstration to carrier customers looking for a flexible solution for capitalizing on Wi-Fi usage in a handset.”
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