Advanced Next Generation Public WiFi
Apparently Steve Jobs loved to walk around Palo Alto, California and after his pride and joy, the iPhone, was born, he naturally took it along with him on these walks. The first iPhone suffered with a poor slow cellular-data network, but it had a much faster data option called Wi-Fi. It even had a feature (still present, but much less talked about, infants some see it as a hassle) that popped up a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks on the screen, so you could always find one within range.
He once claimed there was a big problem with that technique, one that he wanted to fix: Most of the Wi-Fi networks that popped up on his screen couldn’t be used, because they were secured with passwords. Jobs said he understood the need for security, but he was determined to figure out a way to make free, safe, Wi-Fi sharing from homes and small local businesses not only possible, but common. He even wanted to get other companies involved, in a sort of consortium, to make this happen.
His idea was to get as many wireless router makers as possible to build in a “guest network” option — essentially a second Wi-Fi network, securely walled off from the rest of the home network, and with its own name. Then, he hoped that the industry would encourage people to share their bandwidth with strangers via these guest networks. That way, a smartphone user could walk around, moving from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another, without logging in — much like people using cellular data move from one cell tower to another.
Users of this second, guest network wouldn’t have any way to access the owner’s main network, or the computers, network drives, printers, or files on the main network. Yet they’d be able to get onto the Internet, while in range.
No such big public consortium for home Wi-Fi sharing ever really emerged. But Apple and other wireless router makers did wind up building a guest network option into their products. Not everyone though knows how to enable this on his or hers home device.
Some companies, for example European based Fon, are trying to move in the right direction. But there are strings attached that make them less attractive than free, open, Wi-Fi roaming across different routers and broadband providers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying, too, with its Open Wireless Movement but is making slow progress.
But, just because it never took off doesn’t mean that tech companies shouldn’t try harder. There’s is a way to make it happen, so people needn’t rely on expensive cellular-data plans all the time, so cellular networks can be less congested, even with the advent of 4g, cellular has its limitations, over subscribed in some areas, poor backhaul in others, signals struggle to penetrate buildings, WiFi is still one of the answers so people can remain connected when there just isn’t decent cellular reception. But why should you have to wait to get to your home, or your office, or to the nearest Coffee Shop, to get a usable Wi-Fi signal?
The obstacles are real. But they’re not insurmountable.
One problem is that changing the settings on routers is, for most people, like figuring out whether to snip the blue wire or the red on a bomb in one of those movie thrillers. You might have a satisfying result, but you might cause a catastrophe (in this case, killing Internet access altogether).
Apple makes it relatively easy in its AirPort brand of routers, with a clearly marked field labeled “Enable Guest Network” in the “Wireless” tab in its AirPort utility app for Macs and iOS devices. But the key word is “relatively.” You still may have to tinker with other settings, and understand some network terminology.
This can and should be made simpler.
There are other problems to be solved before people will share their Internet. One is that people might reasonably decide that their networks will be hacked. So, even if they do bother to set up a guest network, they slap a password on it, and only make that available to known house guests to whom they wish to offer Internet service without giving out their main password, or allowing access to their files.
Another is that, unlike Mr. Jobs’s vision of iPhone users passing by for a quick check of email or other low-bandwidth services, people know that some of their neighbors will want to simply be free-riders on their pricey bandwidth plans. So people don’t want to make it easy for neighbors to suck up their bandwidth by, say, watching movies on Netflix day and night so they simply don’t share it.
Nothing is ever 100% hacker-proof, of course, but the tech industry should be able to make a convincing barrier between the two networks within in built automatic firewalls. And it should also be easy to allow home users, in a very clear, simple, way, to set bandwidth or time limits on the guest network.
The good news is that, as noted above, some companies are moving in the direction of shared Wi-Fi. Fon, which has been around for years, lets its members share Wi-Fi bandwidth, but only if they own a Fon-branded router or a third-party router with the company’s technology built in. Also, the service is mainly used in Europe, and has never caught on in the U.S., where there are so few Fon routers installed as to make Fon sharing largely unavailable.
The Wi-Fi industry is also taking steps to make using public, commercial hotspots easier with a technology called Passport, or Hotspot 2.0, which automatically connects and eliminates clumsy login procedures when you’re at, say, a coffee shop or an airport.
Passport enabled access points when connected to backend service providers and hubs such as Global Reach’s Odyssys Carrier Platform, allows for a single SSID to be broadcast for guest access, and numerous backend service providers simultaneously to offer their services across that single network, safely, securely.
Of course the users device does need to have been previously provisioned by their carrier or by someone agreeing to be their authentication identity provider, again there are products out there that allows for this such as Odyssys that has an online signup capability for Hotspot 2.0. Users are encouraged to go through this provisioning process once. Your device can then roam on any network supporting a roaming agreement with Odyssys and sharing that same NAI Realm.
It’s time the big tech companies solved this problem by working together, so that Wi-Fi sharing and roaming become a reality. Odyssys™ roaming hub is a global cloud-based platform that can allow carriers or large enterprises to interact with each other and allow interoperable roaming on their WiFi estates for their clients.
For more information on Odyssys™ and to setup a demonstration please contact Global Reach Technology Limited today.
Global Reach & Odyssys™ Global Reach Technology is a software innovator and the leading provider of carrier-grade WiFi and Passpoint™ Hotspot 2.0 services. We have packaged our carrier-grade solution into our Odyssys™ software to provide businesses large and small with private and public WiFi built on a carrier-grade platform.
Chris Spencer (D.Sc) - VP Technology Global Reach Technology Limited http://www.globalreachtech.com
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