The CHOICE Network: Broadband Wireless Internet Access in Public Places

We have built a network, called the CHOICE network, which globally authenticates users and then securely connects them to the Internet via a high-speed local area wireless network. Our network provides easy-to-use, individual-centric, service-oriented wireless Internet access in places other than the traditional corporate offices and homes. Our architecture is hardware and protocol agnostic and is built on an easily deployable software module called the P rotocol for A uthorization and N egotiation of S ervices or PANS. PANS provides authorization, access, privacy, security, policy enforcement, quality of service (QoS) and accounting. In this paper, we describe PANS in detail. We discuss our design decisions, system operation, implementation and performance. We evaluate PANS and show that it is scalable and secure. Our network has been deployed and is operational at a local mall in Bellevue, Washington.