Transcript Extending the Hotzone Network

Connecting The World
Extending the Hotzone
Network
Network Expansion
• As the Hotzone expands the need for new services and new applications becomes
inherent.
• Very often the network operator wants to utilise unused bandwidth by selling it in the
same manner as Hotspot’s are today. They Want to find instant access methods such
as:
– Voucher
– Credit Card
– SMS
– IPASS and GRIC type client solutions.
– Possibly even PW/UN
• To do this the operator will need a provisioning system and possibly a billing system.
Depending on the manufacturer quiet often the provisioning system is responsible for
accepting or denying clients with his credentials access to the network including
those who are in another realm and keeping track of used time data etc.
• Normally billing systems interact with the provisioning system and interrupt the data
to provide and invoice which can be sent to the customer.
2
Provisioning systems
• To add a provisioning system to your Hotzone there are a few points that need to be
taken into account to ensure interoperability between the AS.NET Hotzone and the
system.
– The ControlNET server needs to be the DHCP Server for the network.
– Normally there is an authentication gateway placed on each network, many gateways
authenticate by MAC address, this will not work on a ControlNET network as in a routed
Network the MAC address seen will be that of the last router in this case the ControlNET
server. Therefore a gateway that support IP level authentication is needed.
– Often provisioning systems are priced on a concurrent user basis, as a level of
authentication is already processed by the ControlNET server you may not need PW/UN
authentication for all users, a good way to decrease cost is to implement a source IP based
router between the ControlNET server and gateway, this will then forward guest traffic to the
GW and know traffic to the internet. Remember the ControlNET server can isolate users
into subnets enabling guests to be assigned one subnet.
3
Interaction with billing systems
• The interaction with a billing system varies by vendor but will be somewhat similar for
the purpose of this example we will refer to Service factory Orbyte a system tested
by Airspan.
• As mentioned earlier the provisoning system gathers data on users habits and use in
CDR format, CDR’s are exported in one of three formats; token-separated, fixedlength, or Basic Encoding Rules (BER). Export and transfer of CDRs is done
periodically to a billing system.
CDR Example (Token-separated “;”)
C;20458187@operatorX;;;pp2;;20020527133812;20020527133821;0;0;3850;2576;13882346959341307430;1;0;0;ssiX;;00:00:00:00;;scs1.wla
n;80.63.55.187;192.168.1.2;00:02:2d:23:a9:51;stockholm1;
4
Example CDR
Creating Accounting Information
Verifies that all
OSCs have sent
accounting data and
generates CDRs
Checks what
OSCs are in the
system
OPS
OAS
CDRs via
(FTP or SCP)
Internet
OAG/HSA
Accounting
data
Client Note book
Session
Information
Client Session
OSC
External Billing System
Administrator
5