Prefer, Prohibit and Rename – network selection policies

Thursday, April 14th, 2011 Chris Witeck, Director Product Marketing

This is part 3 of 4 in our series, profiling the iPass Open Mobile for Windows release, including the iPass Open Mobile client v.1.4.1. Part 1 covered highlights, and Part 2 reviewed 3G roaming controls.

Today, we are going to take a closer look at the new “Prefer, Prohibit and Rename” network selection policies implemented in the iPass Open Mobile for Windows 1.4.1 release.

With the iPass Open Mobile Platform, we wanted to provide our customers with a mechanism to really control what type of network connection users can make; where control is based on policies established by administrators via the Open Mobile Portal. How an administrator sets this policy really happens through several different configuration options:

1) Available Networks: First administrators can control what type of networks are presented to users as options. Can the user connect to Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Mobile Broadband networks? These options include both iPass-defined or corporate-defined connection options.

2) Connection Policies: Next, administrators can set policies that determine the selection priority that is used when there are multiple connection options for the user. These options include choices such as ‘Favor Wi-Fi over Mobile Broadband’ to reduce costs, ‘Favor signal strength’ to optimize the user experience. Administrators can also set whether Open Mobile will automatically connect to an available network or if the user must take deliberate action. For example, you may prefer that Open Mobile auto-connect to Wi-Fi networks, but not Mobile Broadband networks since you may not have an unlimited data plan.

3) Mobile Broadband Roaming Policies: Finally, administrators can set much more explicit policies around roaming – since this can be a significant source of unplanned mobility costs for the organization. This includes the ability to set explicit usage limits or disable roaming completely.

What was missing from all of this was an easy mechanism to indicate specific (or named) networks that you want users to connect to all the time, or conversely networks that should always be avoided. The first three settings focused on access across network types. Now we’ve introduced a new capability to manage policy on specific network names.

This is where the new “Prefer, Prohibit and Rename” policy option introduced with the Open Mobile for Windows 1.4.1 client can really make things easy (shown in the Open Mobile Portal screenshot above). Think of this as a white-listing or black-listing option that sits on top of the three options mentioned above. In this context, the network refers to a specific Wi-Fi SSID or Mobile Broadband network name. This new option allows you to:

• Prefer a specific network location to appear at the top of the available networks list
• When that preferred network is available, disable the ability to connect to any other network (this option would allow you to disable a connection to that Mobile Broadband data card in the example mentioned above)
• Conversely, allow you to prohibit a connection to a specific network.
• When a prohibited network is available, you can choose to make it visible but grayed out, or completely obscure if from being shown to users.
• You can also define specific networks that while are still available to the user, the auto-connect policy will be disabled.
• You can also rename networks to something that is more user friendly.

This is a feature that we think will offer a lot of utility to our customers. Perhaps your corporate office has multiple Wi-Fi networks with overlapping signals that may make sense to your internal employees, but confuse your remote visitors. This can make it easy for them to know what to connect to. Or perhaps you are moving to a different Mobile Broadband data card and want to prevent employees from using their old Mobile Broadband cards and force them to request a new one. Or you want to ensure that remote employees who you have given a Mobile Broadband data card to only use the campus Wi-Fi and not the Mobile Broadband data card when they are in the office. There are really many different ways that this policy option can be used.

Did you know? One thing that many of our customers are not aware of is that the ordering of the available networks (see option #1 above) is important in determining which network to connect to when there are multiple options.

For example, look at what happens if you prioritize the free iPass OpenAccess network at the top of the list. When a user walks into a Starbucks Coffee shop with free Wi-Fi (which is part of the OpenAccess network), and that coffee shop is next door to a hotel with a fee-based iPass hotspot that is also available to that user, because the OpenAccess network is at the top of the list, Open Mobile will attempt to connect to it first. Saving you money.

 

 

Tags: 3G network, enterprise mobility, Mobile Control, mobile workforce, mobility management, Open Mobile Platform