FreeSurf: Application-Centric Wireless Access with SDN

Abstract

The increasing need for ubiquitous Internet connectivity has led to the deployment of wireless access infrastructure, including public WiFi networks used for mobile data offloading. Despite the density of public WiFi hotspots especially in residential areas, these networks are severely underutilized, with an average of ten percent of active users and an average of one connection per user per month [1]. Since the revenue from the public WiFi infrastructure is much lower than the cellular counterpart, the operators seek opportunities to monetize their WiFi networks. One such opportunity emerges from the intention of mobile application vendors to provide near-ubiquitous Internet access for their clients. In fact, the revenue and any potential business opportunities for mobile application vendors are highly dependent on the users’ connection time. Therefore, both network operators and mobile application vendors have incentives to march together towards a ubiquitous WiFi for their clients. However, the traditional wireless architecture hinders any such opportunity, since it requires clients to subscribe and authenticate to the operator before establishing Internet access. To overcome this limitation, we propose application-centric wireless access, at which Service Providers (SPs) can authenticate and connect their clients through public WiFi networks, free of charge. Application-centric wireless access requires the delegation of user authentication and access from the operator to the Service Provider (SP) in a secure and auditable manner. In particular, user authentication requests should be redirected to authentication servers deployed by SPs, while access control should be enabled such that only