NAI Resolution for Wireless Networks
draft-aravamudhan-mobileip-nai-wn-00

Abstract

RFC 2468 [1] defines the need of a standardized format for identifying ISP subscribers for dial-up roaming operations. It introduced the Network Access Identifier (NAI) to fulfill this need. The NAI is provided by the mobile node to the dialed ISP during PPP authentication. The ability to resolve an NAI for second and third generation cellular mobile nodes allow traditional cellular service providers to evolve their home cellular networks to provide cellular services, IP packet data services and so on with a single subscription using NAIs. Additionally, this allows cellular provider to evolve their networks to be IP based. Second and third generation cellular mobile nodes must perform a registration and authentication process with their wireless service provider before the mobile node user may initiate other operations (See [1] for examples). These mobile nodes do not support the programming of an NAI nor does the cellular registration message support the transfer of an NAI to the wireless access network. For example, North American cellular networks (e.g. AMPS, TDMA, CDMA) service mobiler nodes that register with a Mobile Identification Number (MIN). The MIN is then associated with a cellular subscriber. MIN is shown here only as an example, the same general idea is applicable to other types of identifiers used in different access network types. For the same reasons stated in [1], it would be convenient if an option was available to provide the wireless subscriber identification in the form of an NAI during the wireless registration and authentication process. This draft proposes a solution to resolve NAIs from traditional mobile node identifiers.

Authors

Lachu Aravamudhan
Mark O'Brien
Basavaraj Patil

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