Networkologist

Goin' Mobile With Internet Access

If you frequently travel outside the reach of your Internet service provider's (ISP) local dial-in number, you have a few choices. You can use one of the near-global ISPs, such as AT&T WorldNet or IBM Global Network, and hope that your travels don't extend past their local access number reach. Or you can dial long distance, which, if you're traveling internationally, can clock phone charges that will make you the target of the expense account troll's undivided wrath. Or you hope business can wait until you get back home, and not dial in at all.

Another option is presenting itself: emerging roaming services from ISPs. Alliances have formed that let users roam from one ISP to another, yet still be billed by their "home" ISP. The concept is similar to roaming when using your cell phone or your ATM card at other banks.

Internet roaming is intended to be seamless. A user takes to the road, and dials into a "foreign" ISP using the lo cal dial-in number given to his or her "home" ISP. The "foreign" ISP verifies that the caller is not its subscriber, then passes the (encrypted) request to the settlement server, which verifies that the user is a subscriber of an ISP in the roaming alliance. After the user is validated and authorized, logon is allowed. The settlement software tracks the relevant details of usage, including connection time, so the service deliverer can be paid for services rendered. Once a month, the user receives a bill from his or her "home" ISP with the roaming charges included. The actual charge to the consumer depends, of course, on the ISP, but the charge will be $4 to $5 an hour when roaming.

Aimquest and I-Pass Two such alliances, led by I-Pass and Aimquest, respectively, are the I-Pass Alliance and the Global Reach Internet Consortium (GRIC). Both offer ISPs the software that provides the user authentication, authorization, accounting and settlement functions required for roaming. I-Pass was launched com mercially in October; GRIC, in November. Both have strong roots in Asia, where there's a highly regulated telecom and Internet market, but they are expanding with somewhat different business models and services.

Aimquest vets its ISPs by charging them a $5,000 setup fee; for I-Pass partners, the software is free. GRIC partners negotiate the settlement rates among themselves, and individually determine the pass-along cost to their customers. Aimquest makes money by taking a small percentage of the roaming charge as its fee, much the way Visa does in the credit card transaction business.

I-Pass brokers roaming minutes, buying from one partner ISP at a previously negotiated rate, and sells those minutes as needed to partner ISPs also at a predetermined rate. I-Pass makes its money by marking up the time "a small amount," according to Chris Moore, president of I-Pass. Additionally, I-Pass levies a $2 roami ng fee per month on the subscriber, charged only if the person uses the service in a given month.

GRIC has 25 partner ISPs providing access in 35 cities in 10 countries. It does business mainly in Asia, operating in Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Australia and a few regional ISPs in the United States, but has impending announcements. I-Pass has 20 providers in its field trials, including BBN Planet and UUNET, and others operating in Canada, Germany, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

The I-Pass software works with both RADIUS and TACACS as well as the Xylogics authentication protocol. Hong Chen, president of Aimquest, says the Aimquest distributed system can scale to support 10,000 domain names. Chen is so confident of his approach that he has submitted the scheme to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a way to handle mobile IP users. The software works with RADIUS but not Xylogics.

Besides allowing users to go mobile with Internet access, roaming alliances also could change the dynamics of the ISP market, giving midsize ISPs a way to compete with the long reach of global ISPs.

Patricia Schnaidt can be reached at pschnaidt@nwc.com.