Subject: [Captive-portals] New Liaison Statement, "Liaison Statement to IETF – Captive Network Portals"

From: Liaison Statement Management Tool <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 13:32:15 -0800

Title: Liaison Statement to IETF – Captive Network Portals
Submission Date: 2019-02-20
URL of the IETF Web page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1630/

From: Bruno Tomas <[email-masked]>
To: Erik Kline <[email-masked]>,Martin Thomson <[email-masked]>
Cc: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>,Martin Thomson <[email-masked]>,Ben Campbell <[email-masked]>,Erik Kline <[email-masked]>,Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>,Captive Portal Interaction Discussion List <[email-masked]>
Response Contacts: [email-masked]
Technical Contacts: 
Purpose: For information

Body: Dear IETF capport Chairs, Erik Kline, Martin Thomson,

WBA Members have prioritized a project to address an ongoing problem in the public Wi-Fi ecosystem, the Captive Portal.
Given the relevance of the subject matter to both WBA and IETF, and the objective of fostering automatic, online, seamless authentication in Wi-Fi networks, the project team would like to expose the main objectives of this effort, that to a certain degree, tackles a complimentary stream.

Problem Solving / Business Opportunity Statement - In Wi-Fi environments, when offering short-term or temporary Internet access, it is common to start new connections using the Captive Portal. This mode uses a web-view that is pushed to the client and has limited presentation, state and scripting capabilities.

The aim for this project will be to document client behaviour, align tactics for presentation and user tracking, security as well as providing suggested guidelines for client behaviour that we expect to gain adoption as a unified standard by client manufacturers and network hardware manufacturers. This should be performed independently of the user authentication scheme.

Project Information - The scope will cover a range of topics, but the main goal will be to produce a whitepaper that can provide reference material for Captive Portal behavior, which will address the points raised in the opening statement together with likely use cases for marketing and communications.

Byproducts of this work can extend to other client on-boarding tactics, such as Passpoint to allow venues to brand and monetize connections, if needed. EULA/ToS acceptance and Security tactics can also be addressed.

Key new capabilities of the Captive Portal behaviour across manufacturers will be documented together with their use in enhancing the performance or use case applicability of Wi-Fi systems. Moreover, AdBlocking software in stock device firmware, shall be assessed.

Initial volunteers include: Accuris Networks; Aptilo Networks; Aruba Networks; Arris/Ruckus Wireless; Boingo Wireless; BSG Wireless; BT; C-DOT; Global Reach; iPass; Shaw; Maxima Telecom; ViaSat; among others.

Reason for involving IETF - As a brief introduction, the WBA is naturally focused on driving the adoption of Hotspot 2.0 (PasspointTM) and its combination with the work reference of WBA, the Wireless Roaming Interface eXchange standards (WRIX) for Wi-Fi Roaming in a seamless, secure and interoperable way. The establishment of a project around the Captive Portal does not change that fact.

WBA sees the NGH/Hotspot 2.0 Online Sign-Up as a natural service evolution of the state of art represented by the Captive Portal and Universal Access Method. We expect Captive Portals, as they now stand, to evolve to specific Passpoint-era functions: but, first, these will need a certain degree of standardization / co-ordination:

1. An enhancement of current Captivated session capability (as currently implemented in Captive Portal gateways and controllers) may be a part of any Passpoint Release 2 OSU implementation (even for automated OSU cases);
2. Online Sign-Up will continue to require manual captivation and user-filled web forms to cover service edge-cases;
3. Online Sign-Up and Subscriber Remediation will both need to cover the case where a user’s permission is sought (and this by manual means).
In summary, these are some of the reasons why WBA is driving this work on Captive Portal, already anticipating that it is likely to still be widely used and have a specific purpose during the Passpoint-era.

In summary, these are some of the reasons why WBA is driving this work on Captive Portal, already anticipating that it is likely to still be widely used and have a specific purpose during the Passpoint-era.

Specific request - Therefore, we would like to establish the bridge to guarantee that there is no overlapping of materials and knowledge promoted, and that the IETF is completely tuned with the overall work being done that will be liaised to IETF at a later stage, we would appreciate any early feedback to the scope of the work and open to explore other ways of collaborating in this matter.

For additional information or any confirmation please contact Pedro Mouta or Bruno Tomás from the WBA PMO ([email-masked]).
Thank you for your kind attention.

Next WBA F2F Meetings:
- October 29-30, London UK
- January 29-31, Hong Kong
Attachments:

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