Wi-Fi Offload Authentication & Security through EAP based approach - White Paper download

WHITEPAPER

Wi-Fi OFFLOAD: AUTHENTICATION AND
SECURITY THROUGH EAP-BASED APPROACH

www.greenpacket.com

WHITEPAPER

Abstract

Data traffic demand is growing rapidly as operators are struggling to
overcome declining margins and rising capital costs in their mobile
broadband strategies. The telecom industry is talking about offload as a
solution but it can take many forms, leaving many operators unsure of
which path to take. The business case for Wi-Fi is evolving, and not just for
data offload but also voice and messaging, offering an opportunity for the
deeper integration of Wi-Fi with the operator’s service portfolio.

One of the many concerns of Wi-Fi deployment points to the end goal of
integrating both the existing and Wi-Fi architecture with minimal changes.
When mobile devices connect to networks, user and end point
authentication play critical roles in preventing misuse, abuse and attack.
This paper will provide a deep-dive into the ramifications of Wi-Fi
authentication and security, with the study of carrier class Wi-Fi challenges
faced by operators in terms of scalability and flexibility of the solution, service
quality, terminal readiness and the desired success in Wi-Fi deployments.

It marks a reversal of attitude once held by carriers, which undermined the
open design and previously chose to deliver their services through their own
tightly controlled networks. By embracing Wi-Fi, they are now seeing their
data offload strategy to pragmatic use on their networks by diverting traffic
to this alternative route. Wi-Fi access also gives the carriers new revenue
streams, and draws in consumers who are increasingly searching for local
wireless hotspots.

WHITEPAPER

Contents

Overview 01

Converging Multiple Access Technology 03

Challenges to Building a Carrier Class Wi-Fi Experience
• Security
• Authentication
• Roaming

Integrating the Mobile Core - Provisioning, Policy Control 06
and Billing

Delivering the Right Wi-Fi Experience

Greenpacket Wi-Fi Offloading Solutions 08

Smart Data Offload

Seamless Data Offload

Dynamic Data Offload

Wi-Fi Adoption Intensifies Interest in Offloading 11

Conclusion 13

Wi-Fi Your Network to More Bandwith! 14

References 15

WHITEPAPER Overview - 01

Overview

Wi-Fi has undoubtedly established itself as a genuine wireless access
technology capable of delivering a cellular experience. The business model
for Wi-Fi has changed from merely a home Internet gateway alternative to an
essential part of the operator’s bigger network data strategy. The rise of the
smartphones resulted in consumers needing connectivity and in turn driving
the need for bigger bandwidth through the Wi-Fi marketplace, as Wi-Fi is
recognized as the de-facto technology for the average smartphone user.

According to a Gartner report, the smartphone sales are expected to
surpass 1 billion units by 2015, when they will account for 50% of the total
mobile device market. The smartphone behaviors are markedly different
from the previous generation of handsets. It is acknowledged that as
devices become more complex, so does the behavior of the traffic mix.
The traffic mix now contains greater consumption of high bandwidth
experience for videos and content, which 3G as a delivery mechanism falls
short. When spectrum runs short, service degrades sharply; calls get
dropped and data speeds slow down. Wi-Fi offloading is an opportunity for
operators to reduce 3G traffic load and at the same time, overcoming the
growing pressure from OTT players like Skype and Google to avoid
revenue erosion.

Wi-Fi remains very much publicized on the operator’s agenda. There is
clear desire to integrate the technology more closely with cellular, both in
terms of ease of use through network discovery, authentication and log-on,
and at the core-network level. Despite these challenges, the adoption of
Wi-Fi offloading will not decelerate as the next generation connectivity in
LTE will drive further the end user’s need for high performance wireless
connectivity; Wi-Fi will be more relevant in the 4G era than it was for 3G.
Moreover, the growth in cloud-based services will only further drive and
unlock the potential of the “big data”.

WHITEPAPER Overview - 02

Several Tier 1 operators are already embracing the Wi-Fi in large scale
deployments in the likes of China Mobile and KDDI in Japan to offload peak
data traffic from cellular networks and support the delivery of new content
and value-added services. The standardization bodies of Wireless
Broadband Alliance (WBA) and Wi-Fi-Alliance is encouraging development
of Wi-Fi standards that addresses the future of Wi-Fi roaming through Next
Generation Hotspot (NGH) and Hotspot 2.0, including offload architectures.
With standards work improving and gaining greater acceptance through
successful trials, the entire value chain of vendors, device manufacturers
and developers will stand to benefit from a larger marketplace.

WHITEPAPER Converging Multiple Access Technology - 03

Converging Multiple
Access Technology

With the rise of heterogeneous networks (HetNet) becoming the preferred
adoption in next generation network, the desire to increase cellular coverage
via Wi-Fi and small cells (including femtocell, picocells, microcells) or any
combination of these methods will continue to provide seamless coverage
to approach ubiquity. In order to maintain the integrity of service assurance,
operators must exercise due diligence in observing the foundation of a
secure network and scrutinize all interconnections to it.

Challenges to Building a
Carrier Class Wi-Fi Experience
From an operator’s point of view, carrier grade Wi-Fi requires strong
security; strong trust through authentication and billing credentials, quality
of service, network discovery and policy control. All of these features are
desirable to ensure the end-user experience is not compromised, as cases
of identity theft and fraud on sensitive information can bring damage to the
operators brand and credibility.

Security

As the number of web-enabled device i.e. likes of smartphones and tablets
continue to grow, the focus of security is equally important on the device,
network as well as the data traversing both secured and unsecured Wi-Fi
networks. The emerging trend of universally accessing data, independent
from the device that is carried, calls for stricter control. The credibility of
tunneling data through unsecured WLAN is challenging to enforce
restrictions onto data streams and content when accessing Wi-Fi hotspot.
The use of encryption protocols such as AES in WPA2 and IKEv2 is
another way to ensure the data packets are sufﬁciently encrypted over
802.1x networks to give the same level of security that is expected of Wi-Fi
as in cellular.


Roaming between networks is complicated such that the roamed network
has no access to the encryption keys used to authenticate the user. The
emulation of roaming ability through the use of Extensible Authentication
Protocol (EAP), ideally SIM-based is supported in Wi-Fi devices these days.
Other issues pertaining to accounting is unclear and how much operators
should charge each other for access.

Authentication

In the user authentication and device authentication process, it is important
that the integration of SIM-based authentication is compliant to 3GPP and
3GPP2 standards. With the adoption of flat-IP architecture and EPC packet
core, the primary SIM authentication method suggest seamless Wi-Fi access
can be achieved with minimal infrastructure and core network integration.
The placement of intelligent agents on the device can help operators
combine advanced policy control mechanism to execute Wi-Fi offload in
managed manner to fit the business needs of the operators. EAP-SIM is used
extensively in WLAN as a basis for negotiating solid authentication as most
smartphones readily supports it. Which variant of the EAP authentication is
used for what network is purely dependent on the operators.

Implementation of a standards based approach to Wi-Fi network identification,
authentication and service provisioning is essential to accelerating and
promoting the use of the Wi-Fi among consumers. Making the 3G/4G to Wi-Fi
handover seamless to the end-user through EAP-based methods (the more
popular and readily supported EAP-SIM and EAP-AKA) will provide a viable
data-offload solution for operators, while standardizing deployment for Wi-Fi
operators and device manufacturers. It will also make integration into mobile
operators’ cellular networks far easier and more cost effective.


Roaming

Inter Wi-Fi roaming is one aspect that is still in the early stages of
standardization towards a harmonized and seamless roaming experience.
A large scale deployment of Wi-Fi can complement cellular roaming and
bring roaming charges down significantly to the end-user. The impact of
Wi-Fi offload is widening, and the way operators integrate Wi-Fi within their
networks is changing. Some operators lacking their own Wi-Fi hotspot
infrastructure and has plans to do so soon, can establish partnerships with
Wi-Fi access aggregators like Boingo and iPass. Those that already have
Wi-Fi offload in place and sufficient investments can continue to expand the
locations where they offer Wi-Fi access and extend the network of partners
to provide domestic and international roaming.

WHITEPAPER Integrating the Mobile Core - 06

Integrating the Mobile Core -
Provisioning, Policy Control
and Billing

Operators are expected to ramp-up Wi-Fi and deployments despite the fact
that the majority of operators still see support for heterogeneous networks
as a challenge – and thus, they need to spend some time testing and
figuring out. Wi-Fi won’t be a rescue for every situation, but they are a
critical tool that operators are turning to and will continue to increase in
numbers. As a result, support for standards SIM-based authentication is
already readily available in smartphones like iPhone, Blackberry and
Android to some extent. A unified authentication and alignment as closely
as possible to the user experience in terms of connectivity, sign-on,
charging and billing and most importantly security and privacy will be the
strong focus towards Wi-Fi networks.

Delivering the Right Wi-Fi Experience
The end-user experience demands for a QoE, while the operators demands
for a reasonable level of QoS. In the QoE terms, the end-user would expect
the collective experience would be seamless, and always on, regardless of
the device which it uses to access the network and suffers no deterioration
of service. On the other end, operators must diligently ensure the QoS is
adhered to within the optimized network performance in terms of service
speeds and SLAs promised. Wi-Fi networks are not devoid of shortfalls.
However, it can be strategically positioned to address and resolve
interworking, security, authentication methods between networks and
create additional value wherever the business model fits.

WHITEPAPER Integrating the Mobile Core - 07

Convergence

Simplify the Wi-Fi offloading experience by ensuring that they can provide
an enriched experience regardless of the network, device and environment.
The end goal of marrying Wi-Fi offload together with 3G/4G technology can
bring new growth and injecting value to the operators’ business
proposition, be it new Wi-Fi access revenues or richer content delivery.

Integration

Automatic and network agnostic approach (3G-Wi-Fi) to synchronize user
credentials in the process to integrate multiple elements of subscriber
provisioning, device and subscriber authentication that is integrated to the
operator’s core network (authenticated through 3GPP compliant AAA) and
coupled to the policy infrastructure; push profile, updates over the air, policy
control management to add intelligence on offload decisions.

Regulatory Compliance

Operators look for a standardized long term solution that handles data
mobility and growth regardless of application and network type. In an
environment of rising cyber crime, operators need to enforce vigilance over
cellular and WLAN networks; assess the aspects of subscriber data
confidentiality & integrity, authentication, access control and attacks while
implementing integrated Wi-Fi access. The vulnerability of Wi-Fi offload is
apparent in the case of direct Internet Wi-Fi that is provided over free
hotspots (i.e. shopping malls, cafes) as a value-add to the subscriber. In
such circumstance, operators need to notify the subscriber before
offloading automatically giving the user a choice. Operator can maintain
visibility and control over Wi-Fi through EAP-based authentication.

WHITEPAPER Greenpacket Wi-Fi Offloading Solutions - 08

Greenpacket Wi-Fi
Offloading Solutions

The Intouch solution suite is a standards-based approach to deal with Wi-Fi
offloading securely. It gives the assurance of secured and managed offload
mechanism and also the option for a dynamic offload mechanism through
policy control. These solutions fully support secured EAP-based
authentication and advanced Wi-Fi security measures.

Smart Data Offload
The Smart Data Offload client is designed to run on top of native device
connection utility for operators looking for a basic offload mechanism
without major investment and modification to the existing network
infrastructure or firmware replacement. The objective of the smart client is
to make Wi-Fi connections more transparent and increase the attachment
rate to Wi-Fi by turning on/off Wi-Fi radio. The ability to support access –
aware and policy preferences of operators’ centralized profiling server
allows subscribers to seamlessly move between cellular and Wi-Fi based
on device, end-user behavior and environmental information. The smart
client does not permanently override the preset network connectivity
settings, but only takes precedence by modifying the policy during policy
administration. The policy activation can be triggered over several criteria
such as device status active, battery levels and signal strength, mobility
detection as well as location detection and time. The smart data offload
provides optimized service levels to customers as well as ensure efficient
ways for operators to manage their network options.


Seamless Data Offload
Greenpacket’s Seamless Data Offload is a client-based solution that aims
to deliver a simplified and cost-effective offload method across multiple
access networks. It is based on the Data Offload Platform. The Seamless
Data Offload client can transparently offload 3G - Wi-Fi and continue to
push operator services and manage data traffic effectively. Seamless Data
Offload, through Inter-working WLAN (iWLAN) takes traffic from the mobile
operator’s radio access over Wi-Fi by tunneling through the PDG at the
operator’s core network. This fits with mobile operators’ need to monetize
services through the personalization of services and the application of
policy management; something which can’t be said of other Wi-Fi offload
approaches in the market today.

Figure 1 : Seamless Data Offload


Dynamic Data Offload
Operators are increasingly looking at using Wi-Fi for offload as part of their
mobile broadband strategies. However, it risks losing visibility over traffic
policies that were configured for the user once it routes through Wi-Fi.
What is lacking is a way for the network to communicate to users
(applications and/or websites they are using) a real-time or predicted
measure of the network’s congestion levels. Greenpacket’s Dynamic Data
Offload client is compliant to the defined 3GPP Access Network Discovery
and Selection Function (ANDSF), to enable dynamic network selection and
switching based on various contextual ability such as cell location, device,
peak hours and subscription plan. Operators can also opt to customize
these policies based on application aware policy, device policy, subscriber
policy and time-based policy to trigger data offload.

Figure 2 : Dynamic Data Offload

WHITEPAPER Wi-Fi Adoption Intensifies Interest in Offloading - 11

Wi-Fi Adoption Intensifies
Interest in Offloading

Wi-Fi deployed in urban or other high traffic locations as an underlay to
increase cellular capacity density is a market differentiator. Ironically, Wi-Fi is
rated as a source of disruption in the wake of the smartphone surge and
driving data usage wild. The emergence of smartphones was borne out of
the popularity of Wi-Fi. On the other hand, it is also Wi-Fi that is helping
operators address the limited bandwidth issues by leveraging on unlicensed
spectrum. There still exist obstacles to be overcome before Wi-Fi
deployments are widespread. Many operator view Wi-Fi or the likes of small
cell topologies such as femtocells, picocells as a complementary solution to
capacity pressure points, rather than a radical new type of network.

One observation and consistent theme presented by operators’ collective
feedback points to the challenge of predicting subscribers’ behavior and
managing them effectively, in the process of improving the user experience
and shaping services. Operators are also aware and implementing
technologies that would allow them to actively manage traffic, from the
device through to the core – streaming video optimization, policy
management and service enablement in the core through advanced,
high-speed platform capabilities.

With GSMA recently announcing in Feb 2012, a joint collaboration with the
Wireless Broadband Alliance aimed at simplifying the process of mobile
devices connecting to Wi-Fi networks; the ease of cross network roaming
receives a boost. The basis of the initiative is primarily focused on SIM
adoption to manage and uniquely identify Wi-Fi networks to mobile devices
for the ultimate cross network roaming experience. It is anticipated,
commercial deployments may be as early as 12-18 months.

WHITEPAPER Wi-Fi Adoption Intensifies Interest in Offloading - 12

The benefits to consumers would be significant, as consumers get Wi-Fi
service mix with their cellular plan. It gives a high level of confidence of
attached Wi-Fi connectivity without searching SSID, input username and
password at all times. The EAP authentication ensures seamless and secure
credential validation and happens automatically. All of that authentication
and connectivity is configured onto the device without user intervention.

The initiative also opens the door for operators to extend the offering of any
SIM-based services into an offload environment. Mobile operators are keen
to make the SIM the secure element of mobile payment services, for
example, and this project would allow transactions to be carried out without
the need for cellular access. The evolution of legacy voice away from circuit
switched towards flat IP in LTE means it could extend voice implementation
similar over Wi-Fi as well; allowing operators to offer carrier class voice
service as well.

WHITEPAPER Conclusion - 13

Conclusion

The concept of Wi-Fi is not just based on the premise of offload. Other
opportunities arise from the building of a well-planned Wi-Fi access to
generate new revenue streams. Mobile operators must catch-up or risk
losing their mark on subscribers demand. In recent years, the rise of OTT
providers like Google, Amazon and Netflix has eclipsed market dominance
by delivering a new and exciting user experience to engage the consumers.
Operators are now aware of the importance of achieving efficiency in
intelligent solutions to create closer relationships with their customers.

There are opportunities to use Wi-Fi as a customer acquisition tool as well
as a churn reduction tool. Operators’ perceptions of Wi-Fi have changed
from seeing the technology as a threat that was stealing traffic and revenue
to a significant opportunity for growing data services usage. The full
integration of Wi-Fi with mobile networks is critical to an operator’s success.
Not just for authentication and data but for all the services the end users
currently receive on cellular networks as well as those they are likely to in the
future, including billing, voice, messaging and roaming.

A major milestone in the efforts to standardize global data roaming over
Wi-Fi was announced by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) on the
successful trial of NGH that included AT&T, BT, China Mobile, NTT DoCoMo
and so forth in the week leading up to Mobile World Congress 2012 in
Barcelona. The initiative was adopted on SIM-based environment as the
secure element to deliver connectivity across networks. One of the key
highlights central to operators is the strict requirements on making both
device and user authentication to ensure integrity and security of the
network is not compromised, when incorporating Wi-Fi as part of the
mobile services strategy.

Wi-Fi has transitioned from a useful unlicensed wireless option for offloading
excess mobile video traffic to an intelligent, managed network where
subscribers can roam securely. According to a report by Strategy Analytics,
the marketplace will expect to see increasing number of operators embrace
Wi-Fi as part of their LTE network deployment strategy; and to incorporate
it fully into their 3G and 4G traffic calculations and become a fully integrated
part of small cell networking and HetNet design by 2015.

WHITEPAPER Wi-Fi Your Network to More Bandwith - 14

Wi-Fi Your Network to
More Bandwith!

Simplicity and standards compliant approach is the key to strengthen the
security of Wi-Fi offloading deployment and the fact that most smartphones
are readily equipped with automatic log-in capabilities nowadays with Wi-Fi
access already configured. Embark on a journey with Greenpacket to
discover how to protect your network through better Wi-Fi management.

With Greenpacket, limitless Wi-Fi solutions abound!

Free Consultation

If you would like a free consultation on how you can leverage Wi-Fi
offloading for an improved network performance and experience, feel free
to contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com. Kindly quote the
reference code, SWP1211-E when you contact us.

WHITEPAPER References - 15

References

1. Wi-Fi Hotspots will be Small Cells in Mobile Broadband Networks by
2015 by Sue Rudd and Phil Kendall, Strategy Analytics

2. Analysis Mason “The Case for Wi-Fi Ofﬂoad” by Terry Norman

3. Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) Industry Report 2011,
Global Developments in Public Wi-Fi

For more information on Greenpacket’s products and solutions, Associate
please contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com Member

San Francisco · Kuala Lumpur · Singapore · Shanghai · Taiwan · Sydney · Bahrain · Bangkok · Hong Kong
©
Copyright 2001-2012 Green Packet Berhad. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language, in any
form by any means, without the written permission of Green Packet Berhad. Green Packet Berhad reserves the right to modify or discontinue any product or piece of literature at anytime without prior notice.

Wi-Fi Offload Authentication & Security through EAP based approach - White Paper download

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked (13)

Similar to Wi-Fi Offload Authentication & Security through EAP based approach - White Paper download (20)

More from Green Packet (17)

Recently uploaded (20)

Wi-Fi Offload Authentication & Security through EAP based approach - White Paper download