Enhancement of a WLAN-Based Internet Service

Since the first commercial service of Code-Division Multiple-Access (CDMA)-based digital cellular service in 1996, cell phones have become an essential part of every Korean individual's life. As of December 2003, there are over 33 millions mobile phone subscribers, which represent 68.7% of the whole Korean population. Meanwhile, during the last 5 years or so, Korea also has witnessed astonishing deployments of the high-speed Internet access based on both Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL) and cable modem [15]. Today, over 75% of the total households in Korea are enjoying the high-speed Internet service. Moreover, as the portable devices, such as laptop, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), and smart phones, become more and more common, the desire to access the Internet on the roads as well as at home/office using these portable devices, at a high-speed data rate comparable with the wireline Internet access, became apparent. To meet such a desire, Korea Telecom (KT), the largest telecommunication and Internet service company in Korea, started a wireless Internet service provisioning based on IEEE 802.11b Wireless LAN (WLAN) in early 2002. This WLAN-based Internet service is called NESPOT. As of December 2003, there are over 330,000 subscribers and about 10,000 hotspots in operation. The NESPOT service is targeting at two different areas: (1) for residential home users, who subscribe both high-speed Internet service (based on xDSL) and NESPOT (for the Internet access of their laptops/PDAs/PCs with the WLAN interface), and (2) for mobile and enterprise users, who subscribe NESPOT only for the Internet access in the hotspots, called the NESPOT Zones, and/or their office environments. As the numbers of subscribers and deployed access points (APs) increase rapidly, KT has been encountering a number of issues related to the network management/maintenance. Moreover, improving the service quality has become very desirable. As part of such an effort, Service Development Laboratory at KT initiated a joint project with Multimedia & Wireless Networking Laboratory (MWNL) at Seoul National University (SNU). In this paper, the current progress as well as ongoing efforts is introduced. The current project is addressing two major issues: (1) a unified AP management, and (2) Quality-of-Service (QoS) improvement for real-time services, e.g., Voice over IP (VoIP). Each AP operates according to a number of operational parameters such as the wireless channel number, IP address, security key, etc. Moreover, the APs typically monitor its operations as well as the network status, e.g., the list of the associated terminals. …