Patent Application
20230354021
This application relates to the field of providing wireless networking service.
Wireless networks allow mobile user equipment devices to communicate without a hard wired connection to a network. But proprietary wireless networks require individual login, signup, joining and possibly even credentialing.
Networking systems and methods here include utilizing an exchange service in communication with a network service, the network service being in communication with a first network and a second network, the exchange service configured to, receive a formation request to form a consortium of networks among the first network and second network, send provision information to a first AP in the first network regarding the second network and a second AP in the second network regarding the first network.
Networking systems and methods here may include an exchange service in communication with a network service, the network service being in communication with a first network and a second network, the exchange service configured to, receive a formation request to form a consortium of networks among the first network and second network, send provision information to a first AP in the first network regarding the second network and a second AP in the second network regarding the first network.
Networking systems and methods here may include an exchange service in communication with a first network controller of a first network and a second network controller of a second network, the exchange service configured to, receive a formation request to form a consortium of networks among the first network and second network, receive an API communication from the first network controller and from the second network controller, in response to the received API communications, send provision information to the first network controller regarding the second network and send provision information to the second network controller regarding the first network.
Networking systems and methods here may include an exchange service in communication with a network service, the network service being in communication with a first network and a second network, the exchange service configured to, allow an operator of the first network to log into the exchange service, receive a query to join a consortium from the operator of the second network, receive a selection of a consortium identifier from the operator of the first network, wherein the consortium includes the second network, associate the first network with the selected consortium, send provision information regarding the first network to APs of the second network, send provision information regarding the second network to APs of the first network.
In order to understand the invention and to see how it may be carried out in practice, examples will now be described, by way of non-limiting example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
Reference will now be made in detail to embodiments, examples of which are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a sufficient understanding of the subject matter presented herein. But it will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that the subject matter may be practiced without these specific details. Moreover, the particular embodiments described herein are provided by way of example and should not be used to limit the scope of the invention to these particular embodiments. In other instances, well-known data structures, timing protocols, software operations, procedures, and components have not been described in detail so as not to unnecessarily obscure aspects of the embodiments of the invention.
Systems and methods here allow operators of proprietary wireless networks to join consortiums. Such consortiums share information that can allow a user with a wireless user equipment (UE) to move from the coverage of their home network to another network without having to re-enter credentials, enter information to join a new network, pay a new network administrator, etc. Thus, like-minded operators of their own network access points (APs) can form and join consortiums for use by their customers/subscribers. Use of the phrase home network is not intended to be limiting and may mean various types of networks including but not limited to a residence network, the first network to which a user signs up for service, a network to which a user is assigned, or any other type. It is simply sufficient that the home network can be different from another network. Said another way, a user can move from the network with which they originally signed up for service to other networks that are involved as part of the consortium.
It should be noted that the UEs that are capable of wirelessly communicating on such networks could be any number of things including but not limited to cell phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, phablets, wearable smart devices, automobiles, or any other device capable of wireless communications. Thus, in this disclosure the term UE should not be considered limiting but should be considered as any kind of wireless device capable of wireless communications.
Additionally, the wireless service which may be provided to the user could be any kind of wireless service such as but not limited to WiFi, cellular, LTE, 3G, 4G, 5G, picocell, femtocell, near field, short range, Bluetooth, or any other kind of system and/or radio access network. The APs may be any kind of radio used to communicate wirelessly.
In an example consortium, operators of various venues may provision their venue APs with information about a consortium of member networks. Operators may include those who own the APs, the venues, managed service providers or any other person or entity who manages and/or operates the APs. Such AP provisioning allows a member AP to respond to a UE query with information about the consortium member networks. And if the UE is able to identify another consortium network to which it already belongs, the system is able to access the appropriate authentication service and authenticate the UE. This can allow a UE to use APs operated by consortium members without having to log back into the networks, join a new network, and/or pay a new network administrator.
The example of
In this example, if operator #1 130 is in a network consortium with a local coffee shop owner, operator #2 160 who operates his own two venues 170, 180 both coffee shops and may be located near the two bookstore venues 140, 150. In such a way, once the consortium is created, a user with UE 192 who has established credentials with the bookstore operator #1 130 at one of their venues 140 can move to the AP coverage of the nearby coffee shop operator #2 160 venue 170 and not have to log in or submit new credentials, join the new network, etc.
It should be noted that the number of operators shown in
Customization of consortiums may also exist. For example, if operator #1 130 only wanted one venue 140 to participate in the consortium but not another of the venues 150, the operator could arrange for the various APs in the various venues to be a part of the consortium or not.
Multiple arrangements of a network could be utilized as shown in
In the example of
Continuing with the example as shown in
It should be noted that an AP or a network may belong to more than one consortium. In such examples, network identifiers may be associated to the corresponding consortium identifier so the respective APs may identify which consortium a UE is attempting to utilize.
After this provisioning, when a UE 192 queries any of the member APs about an availability of networks, the response from the provisioned AP can include information about the various consortium member network identifiers. The user may select a network identifier shown by their UE, or the UE 192 itself may automatically select the network identifier with which it has previously joined (e.g., home network).
After this selection, the exchange service 110 may receive a request for authentication of the UE 192 from a venue AP 142 associated with a first operator #1 130 and an indication that this UE 192 has a home network which is run by operator #2 160. The exchange service 110 may then send the request to the authentication service 124 affiliated with the UE's home network, the network run by operator #2 160 in the example. The exchange service 110 will then get a response from the authentication service 124 of the UE's home network 160 and send the response back to the requesting AP 142 either authenticating the UE 192 or not. If authenticated, the UE 192 may then associate to the AP 142 operated by operator #1 130 without further input of credentials or login, etc.
In example embodiments such as that shown in
Another example feature of a centrally managed system may be the ability of such a system to map the collected data for a particular region. For example, the throughput data of various users in the consortium may be plotted on a map to visualize where additional APs should be installed, or where extraneous APs could be removed or repositioned. In an example, available bandwidth for various consortium APs may be gathered and mapped. These data collections and maps could be for one or many APs in the network and/or consortium.
Alternatively or additionally, a central management feature may include implementation of certain rules or set of rules within the consortiums. For example, a rule may include time restrictions for UEs, time restrictions dealing with paying fees, time restrictions on forcing a log off, data usage restrictions for billing purposes, and/or data usage restrictions for band width management. Any of these or any combination of these or other rules may be used.
The central management could be configured to enforce rules, even across multiple APs throughout the consortium. In one example, a user has paid for a cap of 10 gigabytes (GB) of data, and that user's UE consumes 9 GB of data at venue #1 and then moves to venue #2, which is a part of the same consortium as venue #1. In such an example, the central management may send a message or log off the user's UE if the user's UE consumes the last 1 GB of data at venue #2, because their total overall consortium data usage cap was met at 10 GB. Rules can be associated with users, operators, network operators, managed service operators or other types of operators based on role.
Such a centrally managed consortium example could also be used to modify which operators and which venues are part of the consortium. For example, the central management could disassociate members of the consortium by re-provisioning consortium member APs without including the identifier of the disassociated ex-member. Additionally, the identifiers of the consortium members could be deleted from the APs of the ex-member. In such a way, an ex-member of a consortium would lose the ability to share its network with subscribers of the consortium, and the subscribers of the consortium could no longer utilize the network of the ex-member without separately logging in, paying, joining, etc.
In certain examples, the establishment of a consortium may allow for the members of the consortium to perform billing mediation and/or aggregation for their subscribers.
Certain examples may include creating and using a directory service provided by the exchange service in order to allow finding consortiums more easily. Such a directory could include any number of information and/or metrics such as geographic location of members, bandwidth availability, subscriber user statistics, etc. Such metrics could be searchable and/or categorized.
Certain examples may allow for the creation of roaming consortiums. Such roaming consortiums may allow for different geographically dispersed consortiums to still share accessibility to members as described herein.
It should be noted that the systems and methods here, including the consortium service and/or exchange service features need not necessarily be available only to AP operators who purchase an AP from a specific company which also operates the consortium service. In certain examples, that may be the case, but in certain example embodiments, the owner/operator/administrator of the consortium service may allow operators of APs made by third parties to connect to the consortium service and opt into a consortium as described herein. Such a service could be AP agnostic in terms of manufacturer and could be offered as a networked service for any kind of AP that is able to communicate with the consortium service via a network such as the Internet. In such examples, the owner/operator/administrator of the consortium service could charge a fee for the service depending on any kind of metric such as number of users, amount of data, etc.
Alternatively or additionally, the systems and methods here could be used to identify and track bandwidth use and bandwidth availability at any AP in a consortium. For example, if an AP at one venue in a consortium has available bandwidth at certain times of day, such information could be shared with any kind of third parties such as a third party wireless service provider. The information could come in any form including a map of available bandwidth at various days or times of day. The wireless service providers could compare the available bandwidth areas with their own needs, and lease available bandwidth, or a portion of the available bandwidth, from relevant AP operators.
Network Examples with Web Service
An example of a consortium network is shown in
In this example, the exchange service 210 is shown as a web service in communication with respective controllers 232, 262 of the operators 230, 260. Each respective controller 232, 262 is shown in communication with its own local authentication services 234, 264. Thus, in this option, each operator's controller has its own associated authentication service with which to store subscriber information for authentication purposes.
In the example of
As described above, an example UE 290 may have a home network to which it subscribes, for example, operator #2's 260 network. In the consortium example, the UE could still move to network coverage of a visited network, for example the network run by operator #1 230 and the UE 290 could query any of the APs within that network about other affiliated networks, for example, consortium member networks.
In the
In certain examples, another way to provision an AP may be through a command line interface (CLI) interaction. In this example, the provisioning information could come from an API or email message or any other way.
To authenticate the UE 290, in the example of
Within the example of
Network Examples with a UE Query
The example shown in
In this example, the APs of the various consortium members are not provisioned with information regarding other members of the consortium. Instead, the APs utilize a response to a UE request with an indication to wait while the system checks the availability of the requested network. Because the individual APs are not provisioned with the identifiers of the member networks as in other examples, the APs must request that information from their respective controller, which may in turn request the information from an exchange web service 310.
Thus, in the example of
It should be noted that a combination of the various different network arrangements discussed above is possible, depending on the administration of the network(s). Thus, for example, a networked authentication may be available for certain members of a consortium and a local authentication may be available on others. The exchange service could access authentication information from whichever authentication service is being used by the respective network.
It should be noted that a combination of the various AP provisioning arrangements could be made as well, such as those examples found in
In certain examples, consortiums could be created by a system administrator and/or an operator and invitations sent to potential members.
Next, the operator may determine rules and conditions for the consortium 430. Such determinations could be a range of options including but not limited to terms of service, cost to join, pricing for usage, access policies, etc. Once established, the operator may optionally wish to push invitations to other AP operators 440 via email or SMS for example. Additionally or alternatively, an invitation to join the consortium could be sent by the first venue operator who is establishing the consortium with a link to select to opt in to the consortium. The message could be sent to and from the consortium service and/or exchange service which could then include the venue APs in the consortium whose operators choose to opt in to the consortium.
Once the invitations are sent, operators of APs who wish to join the consortium may then utilize the link if sent, to send their approvals back to the exchange service 450, or their rejection of the invitation. Additionally or alternatively, other examples could utilize automatic approvals based on lists of AP operators, geographically determined consortium members, open consortiums for any network, or any other such example.
Once the exchange service has received approvals to join the established consortium, it could then compile a list of identifiers for the members of the consortium 460. This list of consortium member identifiers could be used to provision APs in examples where such provisioning is used, or to find affiliated networks.
In certain examples, a consortium may be established, either by a system administrator or by an AP operator.
In the example, to join an existing consortium, the first step is for the AP operator to log into the service and/or access the exchange service 510. Next, the AP operator may look up a consortium name and/or identifier 520 in the system based on any of various methods. For example, the operator may enter a text search or select from a list based on a known consortium name, a known consortium identifier, a consortium location, a consortium affiliation, a consortium industry, a consortium with certain geographical boundaries, or any other kind of criteria. Another kind of search may be based on existing and/or targeted subscribers to a particular consortium. Such a search may seek out particular UE users based on their credentials. For example, an operator could use big data principles to find a desired set of potential affiliations of users and join a consortium where such users may frequent.
In some examples, alternatively or additionally, to join a consortium, an operator may utilize a link sent in an invitation as described above. Such an invitation may include a consortium identifier and/or link to the exchange service system to allow admission for the recipient of the link to join to the identified consortium.
In examples where the operator does not have an invitation, after finding a consortium she wishes to join, that operator may send a request to the exchange service requesting to join the consortium 522. In certain examples, if the administrator or the consortium establisher may have arranged for this particular operator to join, or allow any operator to join, and/or allow certain operators to join based on a preset criteria. In such cases, the exchange service will then allow the requesting operator to join the consortium 530.
In certain examples, terms of service may be presented to an operator before being allowed to join. Acceptance of the terms of service may be needed in such examples, for the membership of the operator to be approved. In other examples, the system may have other criteria which the requesting operator must meet in order to be accepted to the consortium.
Next, in examples where the APs are provisioned with consortium member identifiers, the system may provision the consortium members' APs with the appropriate information to indicate that a new member of the consortium has joined 540, and provision the new member APs with the consortium identifiers as described herein.
In certain examples, such as those described in
In certain example embodiments, such as that shown in
Still referring to the example of
In certain example embodiments, a centralized consortium service and/or exchange service may not even be involved with authentication of a user's credentials between and among APs. In such a peer-to-peer arrangement, APs could request and compare stored user credentials with newly requested association requests over a network.
HotSpot 2.0 is a system that allows for automatic association with WiFi APs. The systems and methods here could be used with HS2.0 because of the ability to allow UEs to automatically associate with a WiFi AP by identifying a home network that is a consortium member. In such an example, the UE utilizing HS2.0 could move among the APs in the consortium after an initial HS2.0 authentication.
As disclosed herein, features consistent with the present invention may be implemented via computer-hardware, software and/or firmware. For example, the systems and methods disclosed herein may be embodied in various forms including, for example, a data processor, such as a computer that also includes a database, digital electronic circuitry, firmware, software, computer networks, services, or in combinations of them. Further, while some of the disclosed implementations describe specific hardware components, systems and methods consistent with the innovations herein may be implemented with any combination of hardware, software and/or firmware. Moreover, the above-noted features and other aspects and principles of the innovations herein may be implemented in various environments. Such environments and related applications may be specially constructed for performing the various routines, processes and/or operations according to the invention or they may include a general-purpose computer or computing platform selectively activated or reconfigured by code to provide the necessary functionality. The processes disclosed herein are not inherently related to any particular computer, network, architecture, environment, or other apparatus, and may be implemented by a suitable combination of hardware, software, and/or firmware. For example, various general-purpose machines may be used with programs written in accordance with teachings of the invention, or it may be more convenient to construct a specialized apparatus or system to perform the required methods and techniques.
Aspects of the method and system described herein, such as the logic, may be implemented as functionality programmed into any of a variety of circuitry, including programmable logic devices (“PLDs”), such as field programmable gate arrays (“FPGAs”), programmable array logic (“PAL”) devices, electrically programmable logic and memory devices and standard cell-based devices, as well as application specific integrated circuits. Some other possibilities for implementing aspects include: memory devices, microcontrollers with memory (such as 1PROM), embedded microprocessors, firmware, software, etc. Furthermore, aspects may be embodied in microprocessors having software-based circuit emulation, discrete logic (sequential and combinatorial), custom devices, fuzzy (neural) logic, quantum devices, and hybrids of any of the above device types. The underlying device technologies may be provided in a variety of component types, e.g., metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (“MOSFET”) technologies like complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (“CMOS”), bipolar technologies like emitter-coupled logic (“ECL”), polymer technologies (e.g., silicon-conjugated polymer and metal-conjugated polymer-metal structures), mixed analog and digital, and so on.
It should also be noted that the various logic and/or functions disclosed herein may be enabled using any number of combinations of hardware, firmware, and/or as data and/or instructions embodied in various machine-readable or computer-readable media, in terms of their behavioral, register transfer, logic component, and/or other characteristics. Computer-readable media in which such formatted data and/or instructions may be embodied include, but are not limited to, non-volatile storage media in various forms (e.g., optical, magnetic or semiconductor storage media) and carrier waves that may be used to transfer such formatted data and/or instructions through wireless, optical, or wired signaling media or any combination thereof. Examples of transfers of such formatted data and/or instructions by carrier waves include, but are not limited to, transfers (uploads, downloads, e-mail, etc.) over the Internet and/or other computer networks via one or more data transfer protocols (e.g., HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and so on).
Unless the context clearly requires otherwise, throughout the description and the claims, the words “comprise,” “comprising,” and the like are to be construed in an inclusive sense as opposed to an exclusive or exhaustive sense; that is to say, in a sense of “including, but not limited to.” Words using the singular or plural number also include the plural or singular number respectively. Additionally, the words “herein,” “hereunder,” “above,” “below,” and words of similar import refer to this application as a whole and not to any particular portions of this application. When the word “or” is used in reference to a list of two or more items, that word covers all of the following interpretations of the word: any of the items in the list, all of the items in the list and any combination of the items in the list.
Although certain presently preferred implementations of the invention have been specifically described herein, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains that variations and modifications of the various implementations shown and described herein may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, it is intended that the invention be limited only to the extent required by the applicable rules of law.
The foregoing description, for purpose of explanation, has been described with reference to specific examples. However, the illustrative discussions above are not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in view of the above teachings. The examples were chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical applications, to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention and various examples with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated.
The present application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 120 as a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/381,527, filed Jul. 21, 2021, which, in turn, is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/675,733, filed Nov. 6, 2019, which in turn claims priority as a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/843,521, filed Dec. 15, 2017, which is a national phase application of PCT/US15/068268, filed Dec. 31, 2015, which in turn claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 62/175,924, filed Jun. 15, 2015. The entire content of each of the above applications is incorporated herein by reference as if set forth fully herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62175924 | Jun 2015 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 17381527 | Jul 2021 | US |
| Child | 18196492 | US | |
| Parent | 16675733 | Nov 2019 | US |
| Child | 17381527 | US | |
| Parent | 15843521 | Dec 2017 | US |
| Child | 16675733 | US | |
| Parent | PCT/US2015/068268 | Dec 2015 | US |
| Child | 15843521 | US |
