Eric, Well, as many people asked me the mailing list on IETF roaming group. The status is that it is setup today, and you can follow the following instructions to subscribe to it Enjoy, Hong ******************************************************************** Welcome to the roamops mailing list! If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, send the following command in email to "roamops-request@ns2.rutgers.edu": unsubscribe Or you can send mail to "Majordomo@ns2.rutgers.edu" with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe roamops hchen@aimnet.net Here's the general information for the list you've subscribed to, in case you don't already have it: Specifications for roaming ip network clients -------- Begin Included Message -------

At 10:51 AM 7/5/96 -0700, Hong Chen wrote:

...

As a matter of fact, it is quite doable. Aimnet developed a roaming server (check www.aimnet.com) that allows international ISPs to use each other's network to provide dialup services. A group of ISPs have joined a consortium GRIC (Global Reach Internet Consortium) lead by Aimnet. The roaming server is based on Radius protocol.

A telco company can install modems and route the authentication to the specific ISP for authentication.

Hong,

I looked at this doing this about a year ago but the major stumbling block was that if ISPs share the authentication responsibility using distributed RADIUS, they have the capability of keeping each other's passwords for the user's that used the global access service.

Also, a service you likely know about, started up around the same time in Vancouver, where I was living at the time, called GeoAccess (www.globalexpo.com/goeaccess), was going to target this idea much more aggressively than I (and plus I did not feel like competing with him in particular), and decided on the model on centralized authentication, effectivele becoming a worldwide access ISP without purchasing a single modem or terminal server. But even ISPs participating in his "network" can log the entered passwords.

Telephone companies might have a problem with the legal ramifications of this "roaming" service.

...

I just came back from Montreal INet 96 last week and a new roaming IETF group will be started. We are working on the IETF draft for the roaming and stay tuned.

Please let me know what the name of working group is, and perhaps take this to private email. I would be very interested to know how the password access problem is worked around, or at very least, rationaly pushed aside, and even contribute.

Eric Woodward. ejw@globecomm.net

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