CASE STUDYMetroFi Deploys Wi-Fi Networks Using ADC's SG-1 Service Gateway Background MetroFi is a leader in designing, building and operating Wi-Fi networks.. The Situation In late 2005,
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MetroFi Deploys Wi-Fi Networks Using
ADC's SG-1 Service Gateway
Background
MetroFi is a leader in designing, building and operating Wi-Fi networks The company partners with municipalities, ISPs and other companies
to deliver secure, reliable, high-speed wireless services to entire communities MetroFi delivers free Internet access services supported by banner advertising from local and national companies
Critical to MetroFi’s business model is revenue generated by advertisements “The ad banner servers that we use are great at counting the total number of browser pages that they’ve served ads on, but they don’t provide the context of whether that’s 1,000 ads to one user or one ad to 1,000 users,” said John Reilly, Network Engineer at MetroFi “It makes a big difference to advertisers that they know how many hits they receive by the actual user This is where the ADC Service Gateway (SG-1) came in to fill this requirement
The Situation
In late 2005, MetroFi began evaluating service gateways that could provide this type of granular information while also improving network security, user experiences and the revenue potential of its public Wi-Fi networks in the California cities of Cupertino, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale
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The privately held company needed a product that could support thousands of simultaneous user sessions, enhance accounting for their advertisers and handle policy management on a per-user basis One key requirement was scalability
“We needed a large, industrial-strength, carrier-class box,” Reilly said “Tens of thousands of people have signed up for our service, so we needed something that could handle the number of simultaneous sessions, as well as the traffic that those users generate.”
Although MetroFi’s networks provide free Internet access, another key requirement was the ability to redirect users to a log-in Web page for registration “We wanted to capture their e-mail address and have a check box where they could agree to terms and conditions of our service,” Reilly said
Finally, MetroFi wanted the service gateway to be able to work with its RADIUS server in order to provision services and collect “real-time” information about usage
The ability to know whether a particular session was from a new or returning user was another
important criteria in the selection of a gateway
The Solution
MetroFi evaluated other service gateways and tested “live” another competitor’s product before
selecting ADC’s SG-1 Service Gateway “Although the functionality appeared to be there in the other vendor’s products, the scalability and reliability were not,” said Reilly
The ADC SG-1 Service Gateway’s features include support for:
• Up to 64,000 concurrent users in a single 16-slot system
• Free and paid Internet access, including a variety of billing models, such as time-based, volume-based, prepaid and subscription For example, the SG-1’s Smart Pre-Pay Service automatically redirects users
to a Web page where they can purchase a specific block of time, such as one hour For subscription-based Internet services, the SG-1 can check the username, or IP or MAC address to determine whether the user has already subscribed to MetroFi’s network
• Bandwidth control, including the ability to control by application, each user’s bandwidth in a
hierarchical manner
• Support for any network (e.g., DSL, cable, wireless, and dial-up) or any Web technology, including application service providers (ASPs), HTML and Java servers
• Application awareness, which enables different services to different applications on a per user basis One example is Voice over IP (VoIP), which can be configured to receive traffic based on seven different priorities
• “Walled gardens,” where users are automatically redirected to a particular Web site, such as the service provider’s log-in page This feature includes the ability to send users directly to the Web site they requested before being redirected to the log-in page This feature is also useful for parental controls because the SG-1 can restrict, by user, Web sites that are permitted or blocked entirely
• Centralized enforcement of user policies and security, including spam throttling and browser hijacking protection, on any individual user session
• Multi-vendor environments, including interoperability with other vendors’ Wi-Fi access points and RADIUS servers The SG-1 also acts a mediation device between any third party and commercial Web portals
• A variety of installations, including central office, distributed and customer premises
• Dynamic service provisioning, where users can change their profile and service “on the fly.” This feature enables the delivery of differentiated services tailored to individual subscribers or user groups These features address the needs of a wide variety of public Internet access business models For example, the ADC SG-1 Service Gateway could be used in a municipal-owned Wi-Fi network that’s partitioned, providing Internet access to citizens, as well as intranet and Internet access to city
employees and departments
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The Benefits
In MetroFi’s network, the ADC SG-1 Service Gateway sits between the 802.11x access points and the
RADIUS server “It’s the front door to our network,” Reilly explained
The SG-1 tracks the user’s MAC address immediately when they come onto the network “We present
the sign-on screen the very first time that we get a log-on from a particular MAC address,” he said “If
that MAC address is already in the SG-1 database, rather than present that sign-on screen again, the
SG-1 will simply redirect the user to a second page, which is a kind of start page that says, ‘Thank you
for using MetroFi.’ They click ‘go’, and we send them to whatever page they were trying to go when
they initially came on the network.”
As the network’s front door, the SG-1 provides the first level of network security by thwarting
denial-of-service (DoS) attacks “There’s also the ability to specify access lists to block traffic intended for certain
destinations in our network that a user should have no business trying to get to,” said Reilly
The SG-1 works closely with MetroFi’s RADIUS server by sending start and stop messages each time
a user logs in or out “That’s the basis for all of our usage statistics and reporting,” he noted That
information is critical for MetroFi’s business model, where revenue is provided by advertisers rather than
through customer subscriptions
The Partnership Continues
MetroFi deployed the SG-1 in late March 2006 to serve its initial markets of Cupertino, Santa Clara and
Sunnyvale In all three, MetroFi delivers free Internet access supported by banner advertising from local
and national advertisers
The ADC SG-1 Service Gateway provides MetroFi with information about usage and advertising in its
existing markets that could be helpful when expanding into other areas or when approaching cities and
advertisers about public networks That information, along with the SG-1’s other features, could enable
new business models for MetroFi
“We’re using only a portion of the many value-add services the ADC Service Gateway offers,” said
Reilly “In six months, I imagine there are quite a few additional services that we’ll introduce as we get
into additional cities.”
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