Owners manual

Aruba Instant 6.4.0.2-4.1 | User Guide Hotspot Profiles | 342
Chapter 29
Hotspot Profiles
This chapter describes the following procedures:
l Understanding Hotspot Profiles on page 342
l Configuring Hotspot Profiles on page 343
l Sample Configuration on page 353
In the current release, Instant supports the hotspot profile configuration only through the CLI.
Understanding Hotspot Profiles
Hotspot 2.0 is a Wi-Fi Alliance specification based on the 802.11u protocol, which allows wireless clients to discover
hotspots using management frames (such as beacon, association request, and association response), connect to
networks, and roam between networks without additional authentication.
The Hotspot 2.0 provides the following services:
l Network discovery and selection— Allows the clients to discover suitable and available networks by advertising
the access network type, roaming consortium, and venue information through the management frames. For
network discovery and selection, Generic Advertisement Service (GAS) and Access Network Query Protocol
(ANQP) are used.
l QOS Mapping— Provides a mapping between the network-layer QoS packet marking and over- the-air QoS frame
marking based on user priority.
When a hotspot is configured in a network:
l The clients search for available hotspots using the beacon management frame.
l When a hotspot is found, the client sends queries to obtain information about the type of network authentication
and IP address, and IP address availability using the Generic Advertisement Service (GAS)action frames.
l Based on the response of the advertisement Server (response to the GAS Action Frames), the relevant hotspot is
selected and the client attempts to associate with it.
l Based on the authentication mode used for mobility clients, the client authenticates to access the network.
Generic Advertisement Service (GAS)
GAS is a request-response protocol, which provides L2 transport mechanism between a wireless client and a server
in the network prior to authentication. It helps in determining an 802.11 infrastructure before associating clients and
allows clients to send queries to multiple 802.11 networks in parallel.
An AP can include its service provider Organization Identifier (OI) indicating the service provider identity in beacons
and probe responses to clients. When a client recognizes an IAP's OI, it attempts to associate to that IAP using the
security credentials corresponding to that service provider. If the client does not recognize the AP’s OI, the client
sends a Generic Advertisement Service (GAS) query to the IAP to request more information about the network
before associating. A client transmits a GAS Query using a GAS Initial Request frame and the IAP provides the
query response or information on how to receive the query response in a GAS Initial Response frame. To transmit a
GAS query for any advertisement protocol, the advertisement protocol ID must include the advertisement protocol
information element with information about the advertisement protocol and its corresponding advertisement control.