FreeSurf: Application-centric wireless access

Abstract

The connection-oriented nature of wireless access has been setting limitations to accessing Internet services. In particular, Internet access via public Wi-Fi infrastructure typically requires a subscription and a complicated authentication procedure that can hinder connection establishment, according to recent reports. In this respect, we present FreeSurf, an architecture for turning existing wireless access infrastructure into an application-centric one. FreeSurf essentially enables users to authenticate to wireless networks using their Service Provider (SP) accounts and further permits connections towards the SP's domain. The delegation of authentication and policy based access control leverages on software-defined networking principles. We discuss the FreeSurf architecture, enabling technologies, and incentives for its adoption. We further use a prototype implementation to assess FreeSurf in terms of authentication delay and flow table lookup performance.