Email Delivery

Receive new posts as email.

Email address

Syndicate this site

RSS | Atom

Contact

About This Site
Contact Us
Privacy Policy

Search


November 2010
Sun Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30        

Stories by Category

Basics :: Basics
Casting :: Casting Listen In Podcasts Videocasts
Culture :: Culture Hacking
Deals :: Deals
FAQ :: FAQ
Future :: Future
Hardware :: Hardware Adapters Appliances Chips Consumer Electronics Gaming Home Entertainment Music Photography Video Gadgets Mesh Monitoring and Testing PDAs Phones Smartphones
Industry :: Industry Conferences Financial Free Health Legal Research Vendor analysis
International :: International
Media :: Media Locally cached Streaming
Metro-Scale Networks :: Metro-Scale Networks Community Networking Municipal
Network Types :: Network Types Broadband Wireless Cellular 2.5G and 3G 4G Power Line Satellite
News :: News Mainstream Media
Politics :: Politics Regulation Sock Puppets
Schedules :: Schedules
Security :: Security 802.1X
Site Specific :: Site Specific Administrative Detail April Fool's Blogging Book review Cluelessness Guest Commentary History Humor Self-Promotion Unique Wee-Fi Who's Hot Today?
Software :: Software Open Source
Spectrum :: Spectrum 60 GHz
Standards :: Standards 802.11a 802.11ac 802.11ad 802.11e 802.11g 802.11n 802.20 Bluetooth MIMO UWB WiGig WiMAX ZigBee
Transportation and Lodging :: Transportation and Lodging Air Travel Aquatic Commuting Hotels Rails
Unclassified :: Unclassified
Vertical Markets :: Vertical Markets Academia Enterprise WLAN Switches Home Hot Spot Aggregators Hot Spot Advertising Road Warrior Roaming Libraries Location Medical Public Safety Residential Rural SOHO Small-Medium Sized Business Universities Utilities wISP
Voice :: Voice

Archives

November 2010 | October 2010 | September 2010 | August 2010 | July 2010 | June 2010 | May 2010 | April 2010 | March 2010 | February 2010 | January 2010 | December 2009 | November 2009 | October 2009 | September 2009 | August 2009 | July 2009 | June 2009 | May 2009 | April 2009 | March 2009 | February 2009 | January 2009 | December 2008 | November 2008 | October 2008 | September 2008 | August 2008 | July 2008 | June 2008 | May 2008 | April 2008 | March 2008 | February 2008 | January 2008 | December 2007 | November 2007 | October 2007 | September 2007 | August 2007 | July 2007 | June 2007 | May 2007 | April 2007 | March 2007 | February 2007 | January 2007 | December 2006 | November 2006 | October 2006 | September 2006 | August 2006 | July 2006 | June 2006 | May 2006 | April 2006 | March 2006 | February 2006 | January 2006 | December 2005 | November 2005 | October 2005 | September 2005 | August 2005 | July 2005 | June 2005 | May 2005 | April 2005 | March 2005 | February 2005 | January 2005 | December 2004 | November 2004 | October 2004 | September 2004 | August 2004 | July 2004 | June 2004 | May 2004 | April 2004 | March 2004 | February 2004 | January 2004 | December 2003 | November 2003 | October 2003 | September 2003 | August 2003 | July 2003 | June 2003 | May 2003 | April 2003 | March 2003 | February 2003 | January 2003 | December 2002 | November 2002 | October 2002 | September 2002 | August 2002 | July 2002 | June 2002 | May 2002 | April 2002 | March 2002 | February 2002 | January 2002 | December 2001 | November 2001 | October 2001 | September 2001 | August 2001 | July 2001 | June 2001 | May 2001 | April 2001 |

Recent Entries

In-Flight Wi-Fi and In-Flight Bombs
Can WPA Protect against Firesheep on Same Network?
Southwest Sets In-Flight Wi-Fi at $5
Eye-Fi Adds a View for Web Access
Firesheep Makes Sidejacking Easy
Wi-Fi Direct Certification Starts
Decaf on the Starbucks Digital Network
Google Did Snag Passwords
WiMax and LTE Not Technically 4G by ITU Standards
AT&T Wi-Fi Connections Keep High Growth with Free Service

Site Philosophy

This site operates as an independent editorial operation. Advertising, sponsorships, and other non-editorial materials represent the opinions and messages of their respective origins, and not of the site operator. Part of the FM Tech advertising network.

Copyright

Entire site and all contents except otherwise noted © Copyright 2001-2010 by Glenn Fleishman. Some images ©2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. All rights reserved. Please contact us for reprint rights. Linking is, of course, free and encouraged.

Powered by
Movable Type

« Portland Loses Flagship Community | Main | Tropos Gets Intel Funding »

June 16, 2003

iPass Version 3

iPass releases version 3 of their aggregation/VPN software for worldwide roaming, iPassConnect: iPass briefed me last week on their new software, which improves the interface, clarifies choosing among different kinds of connections (dial-up, a cell sub-type, broadband wired, and Wi-Fi), and adds more corporate protection features.

iPass has partnerships with hundreds of ISPs in 150 countries, including 16,000 POPs (dial-in numbers) and 2,000 broadband wired and wireless locations. iPass sells their service directly to corporations, or through value-added resellers to smaller groups and even individuals. The iPassConnect client allows access to dial-up, wired, and wireless ISPs while traveling the globe at fixed hourly rates depending on the region and type of connectivity. Hourly rates are capped at a maximum day rate for certain types of services, like Wi-Fi. iPass builds no infrastructure.

For the rest of this longer story, please follow the next link

The iPass software is appealing to corporations because it allows a massive number of people to have controlled access to the Internet while traveling without maintaining many relationships and accounts. It allows a single point of entry, as it were, to retrieving billing records by accounts. Corporations can integrate their own directory services with iPass through software iPass provides so that on the road authentication happens through the enterprise system, not through separately maintained iPass records, removing one more level of system responsibilities.

iPass also offers its ISP partners a free software package (along with their share of the revenue from customers that use the ISP) that allows them to handle these special authentication cases, and to track quality of service data.

iPass began on the dial-up front, and you can imagine what a breath of fresh air it would be to be able to have dial-up in Asia, Europe, the US, South America, and so forth through one company back in the early 90s. They added wired access in September 2001, and wireless in March 2002. Most of the delay in broadband had to do with synchronizing their authentication systems with partners. They now stand firmly behind the wISPr (wireless ISP roaming) document from The Wi-Fi Alliance as a way to reduce complexity and cost of adding partners. Although this might make it easier for competitors to also add more partners, Piero DePaoli, product marketing manager, said that this "helps the whole roaming industry."

iPass supports dial-up, ISDN (still popular in Asia), wired broadband (as in hotels), Wi-Fi, and something called PSH, which is supported by two phone companies in Japan for cordless calling at home and cellular while roaming.

I asked DePaoli about iPass's general policy of charging per minute, while the industry has a number of fixed monthly plans. He pointed out that with a lack of roaming as it currently stands, in order to benefit from those fixed monthly plans a single employee would have to have access to several of them, and would often be paying on months they weren't using the service that much because of minimum plan commitments. iPass has found that when you average travel across a country, many travelers aren't on the road every month, but might have extensive travel from time to time.

iPass did adapt their rates in places where a maximum rate is charged for a day's access, as in hotels. They charge per minute up to a maximum rate, and then not again during the period of midnight to midnight (most venues) or noon to noon (hotels). DePaoli said as the market changes, however, the model for charging could change overall.

The new iPassConnect 3 software includes three major changes. (Also, it works only under Windows XP, 2000, Me, NT 4 (service pack 6 or later), and 98 Second Edition.) First, instead of lumping all services together, it segregates out the medium (dial-up, Wi-Fi, etc.) for easier access.

Second, it now does Wi-Fi sniffing with appropriate (most) Wi-Fi cards to allow easy recognition of iPass partner networks. In fact, they also can lock out non-partner networks if this is a corporate policy for their clients. Users can hand configure one special network (like a home network). iPass now has 1,500 hot spots in their aggregated partner network.

Third, the software now has policy enforcement tools. It always could check for a VPN before allowing communication, and terminating a connection that doesn't have a VPN enabled. It now also can enforce anti-virus and personal firewall software being turned on. This works with a few major packages, including Zone Labs and BlackICE (now renamed); and Norton and McAfee.

Finally, iPass added a technique that allows end-to-end password encryption and one-time username obscuring so that there's no part of the transaction from client software to iPass's software running in an enterprise that can replayed or sniffed. All of iPass's hot spot partners must install a digital certificate at a reachable location that iPassConnect can use to verify before allowing a hot spot connection. This prevents rogue AP interceptions, too.

1 Comment

"PSH" probably is PHS, Personal Handyphone System, a DECT-style system with data rates between 64 and 128 kbit/s -- semi-ubiquitous and quite useful in Japan.