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The Importance of the AAA Platform in a WiMAX Network
Often considered too late in the process, the selection of the right AAA solution can have a significant impact on the success and viability of a WiMAX network. Interview with Johan Terve, VP Marketing for Aptilo Networks.
Q) What exactly is AAA?
AAA stands for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting. It is a core
part of a service management solution providing control of access, user services
and billing in wireless and fixed networks. Many AAA solutions stop there;
others on the market go much farther, offering additional values such as
subscriber and session management, policy control, voucher management, advanced
authentication, intelligent roaming and a more. These additional features
are designed to provide a solid foundation for a growing network. They can
also help differentiate a business (or service) from a crowded field.
Q) Why is AAA important? Isn't it just an "add-on" feature that comes at the
end of building out a wireless service?
We have met with many prospective customers during the past years. Many of
those have made the choice of AAA solution an active one, with procurement
happening early in the deployment process. Making their AAA selection
up-front became a fundamental component in making sure that both their current
business models of today as well as future ones would be supported. In
essence this is what is required to secure future success for any provider in
the market.
All too often, however, we face prospective customers who for some reason have
turned the selection of AAA into a non-active choice. In those cases the
decision is often made very late in the process, and frequently based on only a
very few main criteria, such as number of authentications per second. Even
though this of course is an important parameter, making a AAA decision based
solely on this single aspect can be fatal for your business, with significant
limitations as a consequence.
You could compare it to buying a car using the amount of horsepower as your only
selection criteria and then hitting the nearest highway, without even thinking
about what your vehicle should be used for or where you want to go. The
AAA service management solution should more be regarded as the dashboard of the
car combined with a steering wheel, accelerator and brakes, indicators and GPS
system. It is in essence where services are defined and personalized, and
policies enforced to control which users access the Internet, their service
level and billing. In other words AAA should be regarded as your most
important node when it comes to defining exactly what services you want to bring
to your customers. With this in mind there is no question that AAA should
be one of your first thoughts; certainly not a forgotten item.
One should never underestimate the importance of starting with the business
aspects and goals, and make the best possible attempt to outline the short- and
long-term commercial models, as this can have a direct impact on the entire
network and radio equipment selection. Some vendors may simply have
difficulty technically supporting the business models you want to implement.
So, start with the business aspect of your services and do not settle with only
the core functions. While these core functions might be obvious at first
thought, it is important to go beyond that to seek the functionality that can
really make a difference for your business.
Q) What features do AAA and service management offer that are relevant to
today's changing market, specifically for WiMAX?
WiMAX has of course been very inspired by the mobile/cellular world when it
comes to technology including its well-defined standard nodes and licensed
spectrum. However, it has also been affected by the Wi-Fi hotspot and
fixed broadband markets when it comes to business models. The need to
deploy nomadic and online signup-types of business models is increasing by the
fast-growing number of WiMAX-embedded devices on the market. Developing
countries have proven to be the strongest market for WiMAX. In many of
these markets it's just not feasible to send an invoice at the end of the month,
the credit risk is often all too high.
Instead operators are looking at prepaid business models similar to those used
with Wi-Fi hotspots. A complicating factor is that in many of these
markets the use of credit cards is not a viable alternative either, so the
ability to offer different alternatives with prepaid, including scratch cards
and refill of prepaid accounts through ATM machines is a must. It is
therefore important to choose a AAA solution with well thought-out APIs and the
flexibility to seamlessly integrate with different external payment support
systems e.g. an ATM machine-based refill solution.
Interoperability in a changing wireless landscape is also an important feature
that a well-built AAA solution can address. There are many existing fixed
broadband Internet ISPs deploying WiMAX as a mobile alternative for their
clients. They all have some sort of legacy AAA or LDAP user database that
cannot support the new WiMAX installation. One option is to implement a
new network for the WiMAX deployment with all the back-end systems in parallel
with the existing network. This is a costly approach with product
investments, the need to build up know-how for the new systems and additional
operational costs for running two different parallel solutions.
Fortunately there are AAA vendors that go beyond basic AAA and offer a solution
that makes the WiMAX network interoperable with the legacy AAA or LDAP database.
One such an example is the Aptilo WiMAX Legacy Connector™ which mediates between
the WiMAX-specific AAA attributes and the legacy user database, making it
possible to just "plug-in" a WiMAX network on top of the existing legacy ISP
back-end.
Q) What is needed in a AAA solution to support next-generation WiMAX
services?
A good AAA solution will have interfaces that allow an application to trigger a
Change of Authorization (CoA) request to, for instance, increase the bandwidth
temporarily for a user. One example of the type of application where this
would be a tremendous benefit is next-generation WiMAX services such as
Video-on-demand (VoD), where a VoD server can trigger an increase of the
bandwidth when a user decides to watch a movie. The only way to
accommodate this is to have a AAA solution that is flexible enough to allow a
CoA request from the VoD server over the Internet through some sort of
provisioning interface. The same interface could potentially also be used
for provisioning of new users from external portals or over-the-air OMA-DM
systems.
Johan Terve
Vice President Marketing, Aptilo
Johan Terve serves as the Vice President of Marketing at Aptilo.
Previously, Terve was the VP Marketing & Sales at Ingate Systems and in that position he
succeeded in putting the company on the map as the leading global player in
SIP-capable Firewalls and enterprise session border controllers (SBCs).
From his 23 years experience in the IT industry, Terve have spent more than ten
years in various CEO, VP and Director positions in the IT distribution business.
At Nordic Datadistribution he was responsible for all business divisions and
corporate marketing and helped this major IT equipment distributor to become the
fastest growing company in Sweden for four consecutive years. Mr.
Terve started his career as software developer and has a broad university-level
education in business administration, psychology and economics.
