APPARATUS AND METHODS FOR ACCESS SOLUTIONS TO WIRELESS AND WIRED NETWORKS

• US 20120210011A1
• Filed: 02/15/2011
• Published: 08/16/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/15/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Boingo Wireless, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Cloud 9 Wireless, Inc. (Boingo Wireless, Inc.)
• Inventors: LIU, HANYANG, TONKIN, SEBASTIAN GEORGE
• Granted Patent: US 9,264,435 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/229
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/10 for controlling access to devices or network resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/082 using revocation of authorisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/084 using delegated authorisation, e.g. open authorisation [OAuth] protocol
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/12 WLAN [Wireless Local Area Networks]

Abstract

A method, apparatus, and system in which a module may have both an embeddable portion and a cooperating downloadable portion scripted to plug in and be integrated into an existing Terms and Condition page of a public Wi-Fi and/or wired network. The module is scripted to cause an injection of a third-party captive portal and authentication flow when the client device with a resident browser application contacts a host gateway or other host controller to undergo a sign on experience as a guest to access/connect into a public Wi-Fi and/or wired network. The module is also scripted to direct the web browser back to the Terms and Condition page once the web browser of the client device has been through the third-party captive portal and authentication flow and its associated one or more web pages that are parsed and rendered by the web browser.

Claims

1. An apparatus for a client-server environment, comprising:

a module having both an embeddable portion and a cooperating downloadable portion scripted to plug in and be integrated into an existing Terms and Condition page of a public Wi-Fi and/or wired network, where the module is scripted in a compatible programming language as the client-side web browser application resident on a client device, where the module is scripted to cause an injection of a third-party captive portal and authentication flow when the client device with a resident browser application contacts a host gateway or other host controller to under go a sign on experience as a guest to access into

     1) a public Wi-Fi network,

     2) public wired network, or

     3) both, wherein the Terms and Condition page is the first web page the web browser fetches and attempts to render on a display of the client device and can go by different names including a Wi-Fi Sign-in Page, a Splash page, Login page, Host portal page, or similar webpage; and

where the module is scripted to direct the web browser back to the Terms and Condition page once the web browser of the client device has been through the third-party captive portal and authentication flow and its associated one or more web pages that are parsed and rendered by the web browser, and any portions of the module coded in software are tangibly stored on a computing-machine readable media in an executable format.

2. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the module is implemented in client-side JavaScript to integrate with the Terms and Condition (T &

C) page and be parsed by the web browser of the client device when the Terms and Condition page is fetched; and

thereby, work with diverse types of public Wi-Fi and/or wired network host gateway and host controller equipment, each with their own different configuration but each configuration commonly supports a captive portal environment with an editable Terms and Condition page and a walled garden policy to give the ability to white list a third party guest server and its served web pages by

     1) IP address

     2) name or

     3) combination of both, where the embeddable portion of the module is scripted to plug in and be integrated into the editable Terms and Condition page of the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network.

3. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the embeddable portion of the module is coded to give an indication of 1) an owner of the gateway or other controller to the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network, 2) geographic location of the gateway or other controller to the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network, and any combination of both, and the downloadable portion of the of the module is coded in part to redirect the web browser to a proper version of the scripted third-party captive portal and authentication flow dependent on the indication of ownership or geographic location communicated by the embeddable portion,

where the web browser of the client device is redirected from the Terms and Condition page of the host controller to the URL of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow process on the third party server along with any unpredictable GET parameters that are necessary for authentication on the Terms and Condition page by the downloadable portion of the module, and

upon reaching the end of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow, the flow is coded to issue 1) a HTTP redirect 302 status code or 2) to embed a link that sends the web browser to a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) address of the Terms and Condition page of the host controller along with modified GET parameters needed to trigger an authentication form submission on the Terms and Condition page.

4. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the third-party captive portal and authentication flow and its associated one or more web pages that are parsed and rendered by the web browser are configured to deliver a consistent, centrally-hosted connection experience across diverse types of Wi-Fi equipment and configurations for the purposes of one or more of 1) displaying advertising, 2) maintaining a consistent guest experience, 3) delivering marketing messages, 4) consolidated tracking of client devices accessing the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network, and 5) interrogation of cookies and MAC addresses of the client device seeking access to the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network, where at least two or more host controllers each a different type of Wi-Fi equipment but from a common owner have the same consistent guest experience, same advertising and same marketing messages presented to the web browsers of these two or more host controllers;

where the third party captive portal and authentication flow presents a web page that mimics the T &

C page and then redirects the web browser of the client device to the URL address of one or more advertising or promo pages where they will be issued a HTTP redirect status code, such as a 302 status code, to either another promo or onwards toward authentication, depending on the coded string in the downloadable portion of the module and the user'"'"'s promo interaction history stored in the third party server, and when any guest software on the third party server interrogates the cookies of the client device and sees that this client device has previously visited specific promo pages, then the web browser can be directed to alternative promo pages.

5. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where when the web browser parses the objects and files of the webpage to render the T&

C web page on a display of the client device, the web browser will parse the downloadable portion of the module that is scripted to direct the injection of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow, via the web browser parsing, when the browser of a client device initiates the sign on experience, where the downloadable portion of the module is scripted in JavaScript, and where the JavaScript code of the downloadable snippet redirects the web browser to this new URL location of the third party server and its associated web pages via the browser parsing this information and then the web browser interfacing/interacting with the host controller to perform its standard network addressing and routing functionality.

6. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the embeddable portion of the module is configured to examine the URL string of the web browser for parameters that tell it how to proceed, where a first parameter the module looks for is a “

disable”

flag and when the disable flag is present, the module script understands this third-party captive portal and authentication flow has been remotely turned off and the web browser of the client device will be directed to the standard T &

C Page flow of the host controller, and a second parameter the module looks for is an “

action”

flag and when the action flag is present, the module scripted code proceeds to present any authentication parameters needed to proceed through the T &

C page of the host controller, and where the embeddable portion of module is also scripted to proceed through to the T &

C page of the host controller when the third party portal server becomes unreachable after a set period of time.

7. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 6, where the module is further scripted when both the “

disable flag” and

the “

action flag”

in the HTTP parameters are not present, then the web browser is redirected to the URL of the third party server before any web page is rendered by the web browser, and a temporary graphic indicating loading is presented on the display of the client device instead, and the module is coded to cause the host controller T &

C page'"'"'s complete URL and including GET parameters necessary for login, to be passed as a parameter to the third-party captive portal and authentication flow during the redirect.

8. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the host gateway or other form of controller is configured to fetch its T &

C webpage and the module embeds as part of that T &

C webpage, where the module is scripted in JavaScript, and the downloadable portion of the module is scripted to cause the web browser to be redirected to one or more third party web pages that require two or more of the following

     1) authentication of the user,

     2) payment,

     3) agreement to an acceptable use term and conditions policy,

     4) viewing of one or more advertisement when these users under go the sign on experience as a guest to access the public WiFi and/or wired network, and where multiple host controllers operated by a common entity are directed to the same one or more third party web pages.

9. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the host gateway or other form of controller is configured to fetch its T &

C webpage and the module embeds as part of that T &

C webpage, and the T &

C webpage would serve as a fall back

     1) in case the third party server is unreachable,

     2) the web browser does not have JavaScript enabled,

     3) if advertisements could not been allocated for the client device, and

     4) any combination of the three, and

where the module with its embeddable and downloadable portions are coded to make a consistent, centrally-managed and hosted captive portal experience across a plurality of host controllers, where two or more of the host controllers have disparate hardware setups and one or more of the hardware setups is not configured to support external authentication, however, the module is scripted to cause an injection of a third-party captive portal and authentication flow as long as each of the plurality of host controllers implement a walled garden policy for the address of the third party server and have a customizable T &

C page that can embed the embeddable portion of the module.

10. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the embeddable portion of module is scripted to allow the Wi-Fi connection experience to be turned on or off remotely for 1) a particular user, 2) a given venue location, and 3) both based on, a client device'"'"'s ID or user'"'"'s ID past session information while defaulting gracefully to the standard connection experience configured for the host controller 1) for users that are not being targeted and thus the ID does not match, or when the third party server becomes unreachable.

11. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the downloadable portion of module is scripted to direct the web browser one or more times until the web browser reaches and proceeds through the web pages of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow, where the embeddable portion of the module configures the host controller or an intermediate page to issue a HTTP redirect status code to the URL of the web pages of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow, and when the T &

C page is hosted within an iFrame, integration of the embeddable portion involves setting the SRC attribute of the iFrame to the first web page of the third-party captive portal and authentication flow.

12. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the third-party captive portal and authentication flow is scripted such that after activating an icon to accept the Terms &

Conditions policy, the web browser will be presented a Promo Page that includes an advertisement, where some advertisements have a target conversion action while others are animations that automatically redirect the web browser upon finishing to the T &

C page, and

the third-party captive portal and authentication flow is scripted to perform web analytics tracking events all of the user'"'"'s activities from across a plurality of different venues using many different make and models of internet gateways to access this same the third-party captive portal and authentication flow.

13. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 5, where the directing of the web browser is done by setting the location property of an active window to the URL of the third party server and one or more of its web pages while appending a parameter indicating the URL of the T &

C Page.

14. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the third-party captive portal and authentication flow is scripted after the promo is displayed on the client device then Guest Portal software sends an action flag in the accompanying HTTP parameters so that the module detects the action flag and generates a POST request to submit the parameters of authentication of the user of the client device, which were solicited from the user earlier in the third-party captive portal and authentication flow, for the T &

C page, without requiring the user'"'"'s interaction with the T &

C page, and then gain access to the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network with a free internet session granted.

15. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 5, where the module is coded to send control information via the web browser'"'"'s http request, including cookies and HTTP GET parameters to be analyzed and recorded by the Guest Portal software coded in the party captive portal and authentication flow.

16. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 5, where the module is coded to pass information via the web browser to cause the Guest Portal software on the third party server to determine whether the client device should be directed through the third-party captive portal and authentication flow in lieu of the Host controller default sign-on flow, and when the Guest Portal software determines the third-party captive portal and authentication flow is now complete for the client device, then the Guest Portal software issues a HTTP redirect code back to the Host controller URL while appending a GET parameter flag intended to communicate to the module to disable redirecting the web browser to the third-party captive portal and authentication flow.

17. The apparatus for the client-server environment of claim 1, where the third-party captive portal and authentication flow includes multiple third party web pages served by the third party server that include 1) agreement to Terms &

Conditions reflective of those presented in the Host controller'"'"'s Terms &

Conditions page,

     2) advertisements served for the web browser to render on a display of the client device,

     3) to deliver a consistent, centrally-hosted connection experience across a plurality of host controllers owned by the same entity, and where the module is coded in JavaScript, and when the web browser parses the JavaScript snippet module with the action flag present, then this causes the web browser to submit an authentication form filled in with the appropriate HTTP POST/GET parameters for the user to gain access to the public Wi-Fi and/or wired network based on the user agreeing to these conditions earlier in the third-party captive portal and authentication flow.