Wouldn't it be nice to turn up at a new location and your mobile phone seamlessly connects to the local Wi-Fi Hotspot?
What if you could have a mobile-phone-like roaming experience, but with your Wi-Fi devices? There's been a lot of work to enable just this functionality - enter the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) OpenRoaming standard.
The OpenRoaming framework allows you to connect once, and from this point forward to roam seamlessly, across hotspots.
Connecting to hotspots can be inconvenient (who wants to provide more personal details for the umpteenth time), and can present a security risk. OpenRoaming solves these problems with secure and seamless roaming, using Passpoint with enterprise-grade (802.1X) authentication and encryption, including support for the new(er) WPA3 standard.
Before we take a deeper look at OpenRoaming, let's take a quick look at the problem OpenRoaming is seeking to resolve...
It's a major drag to continue to have to put in your details each time you connect to a hotspot and that tends to mean you don't bother. OpenRoaming is all about making the ability to connect to hotspots seamless and more usable - so, well, you'll use them more.
For a business, why would you want to implement OpenRoaming? The Wi-Fi Alliance has handily provided a good shopping list for this:
The Wireless Broadband Alliance has three main components to the OpenRoaming standard:
(The following text is a summarisation of the text from this link)
Of course you will need to implement your Wi-Fi network correctly in the first place, or you'll deliver a poor end-user experience, which could be really counterproductive, as you seek to attract new customers.
To allow devices to seamlessly roam within your facility, you need to design your network correctly - don't skimp on the Predictive RF Design phase.
To be able to sign up as an OpenRoaming partner, the end organisation needs to manage a Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint-Enabled network.
This pre-requisite is required prior to signing up for the OpenRoaming federation.
Passpoint is supported on both the Wi-Fi access points and the end clients. This allows for clients to connect to new hotspots without the need to re-enter their credentials each time.
After a user has initially connected to a Passpoint hotspot, they will be able to connect seamlessly next time (for this reason, Passpoint is commonly deployed in airports, coffee shops and locations with high traffic).
To sign up for hosting OpenRoaming (for you to provide the service to your customers), you can contact the Wireless Broadband Alliance on membership@wballiance.com.
Note that there are fees - there are initial sign up and some ongoing fees also, so you'll want to take these into account. The exact fees will depend on which level you sign up for (options are Principal, Contributor, Industry Partner or Implementer).
A Wireless Broadband Alliance federation that lets devices join participating Wi-Fi networks automatically and securely, without captive portals or passwords.
It uses Passpoint (Hotspot 2.0) on the network and identity providers that vouch for the user, so devices authenticate automatically when they find an OpenRoaming network.
Passpoint-capable Wi-Fi infrastructure and a connection to the OpenRoaming federation, often through a platform such as Cisco Spaces.
Yes. Connections use enterprise-grade encryption with 802.1X authentication rather than an open network.
The summary for OpenRoaming is pretty simple: people want to seamlessly connect to Wi-Fi.
No one likes repeatedly sharing personal details to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots and the combination of Passpoint-based automatic sign-in with enterprise-grade (802.1X / WPA3) security not only makes the experience seamless, but also makes it secure.
There are fees though, so this isn't going to be a solution for everyone - you will need to see the business benefit of providing OpenRoaming and work out the ROI for your business.
In the end, OpenRoaming is really about a coming of age for Wi-Fi. Users now have the opportunity to have a much better, seamless (yes, that word again) experience and this means more users will vote with their feet and use Wi-Fi as a priority.
OpenRoaming is a big move forward, and as we know in the world of Wi-Fi, things don't stand still for too long.
Our Wi-Fi survey and design team designs, surveys and fixes enterprise Wi-Fi across Australia, and the free AP Estimator gives you a first AP count. If that would be useful, get in touch with the IPTel team or email sales@iptel.com.au.