Broadband Forum Liaison To:
Wi-Fi Alliance - EAP Program
Greg Ennis gennis@wi-fi.org
Wireless Broadband Alliance - Next Generation Hotspots
Tiago Rodrigues tiago@wballiance.com
IEEE 802.11 Working Group
Bruce Kraemer bkraemer@ieee.org
IETF Operations and Management Area Working Group
Scott Bradner sob@harvard.edu
Chris Liljenstolpe christopher.liljenstolpe@bigswitch.com
Melinda Shore melinda.shore@gmail.com
IETF Internet Area WG
Julien Laganier julien.ietf@gmail.com
Suresh Krishnan suresh.krishnan@ericsson.com
From:
Christophe Alter
Broadband Forum Technical Committee Chair
(christophe.alter@orange.com)
Liaison Communicated By: Bill Welch Juniper Networks bwelch@juniper.net
Date: December 7th 2012
Subject: New work on Public Wi-Fi Access in Multi-service Broadband Networks at the Broadband
Forum
The Broadband Forum (www.broadband-forum.org) would like to update your organization on our
recent activity on Public Wi-Fi access. At the Q4 2012 meeting in Osaka Japan, the Broadband
Forum is considering a new work item on Public Wi-Fi Access in a Multi-service Broadband
Network.
The project scope includes, use cases, physical and logical architecture and functional and/or
nodal requirements for public Wi-Fi access used nomadically as part of a broadband network.
Architecture can include data, signaling, and management, as well as functional decomposition
and placement into network nodes. Functional and nodal requirements will be considered for the
following: WiFi Access Point (AP), Residential Gateway (RG), CAPWAP Access Controller (AC),
Broadband Network Gateway (BNG).
The scope also includes potential interactions with Policy Decision Point (PDP) and/or
Authentication Authorization Accounting Server (AAA).
The following topics are being considered as part of this work:
 The potential to simplify WiFi APs by placing some of their current functions (e.g.
authenticator) in a more centralized controller.
 Vetting the use of CAPWAP as a protocol support centralization of WiFi control, and
then building upon this or the chosen protocol as necessary.
 Retain the current capability for a single physical AP to host multiple WiFi providers
and services.
 AP control plane (including authentication) as an architectural overlay to the
broadband access with decoupling desired
 Traffic management of AP broadband access allowing separation of TE engineering
and any potential Subscriber management
 Consideration for both AC and BNG co-located and separated
 Authentication of APs, ACs, and attaching devices (including who acts as the
authenticator)
 Security mechanisms (e.g. Key management) throughout the architecture
 Reliability mechanism (e.g. Keepalive) throughout the architecture
 How to support location based service
 Load balancing (e.g. the amount of traffic /users per AP)
 Develop interoperability for the interface between AP and AC
 Define the interface requirements between AC and broadband network.
The Broadband Forum always seeks to avoid duplication of work. We welcome any information on
related specifications or on-going work at your organization that would be useful to scope this new
project.
The next Broadband Forum meeting will be held on March 4th 2013 in San Antonio Texas.
Sincerely,
Christophe Alter,
Broadband Forum Technical Committee Chair
CC:
Christophe Alter, Broadband Forum Technical Committee Chair (christophe.alter@orange.com)
Robin Mersh, Broadband Forum CEO (rmersh@broadband-forum.org)
Gabrielle Bingham, Broadband Forum Secretariat (gbingham@broadband-forum.org)
Dave Thorne BT Broadband Forum E2E Architecture WG Chair (david.j.thorne@bt.com)
Dave Allan Ericsson Broadband Forum E2E Architecture WG Chair (david.i.allan@ericsson.com)
Sven Ooghe Alcatel-Lucent Broadband Forum E2E Architecture WG Vice Chair
(sven.ooghe@alcatel-lucent.be)
Date of Upcoming Broadband Forum Meetings
DATES
LOCATION
4th – 8th March, 2013
San Antonio, Texas, USA
3rd – 7th June, 2013
Asia (TBA)
16 – 20 September, 2013
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
18th – 22nd November, 2013
Rome, Italy
th
th
Note: A list of upcoming meetings can be found at http://www.broadbandforum.org/meetings/upcomingmeetingsataglance.php
Attachments:
None