Enhancement of a WLAN-Based Internet Service

A wireless LAN (WLAN)-based Internet service, called NESPOT, of Korea Telecom (KT), the biggest telecommunication and Internet service company in Korea, has been operational since early 2002. As the numbers of subscribers and deployed access points (APs) increase, KT has been endeavoring to improve its service quality as well as the network management. In this paper, we introduce a joint effort between Seoul National University (SNU) and KT to achieve it. We have been addressing two major issues as part of the joint project thus far: (1) a unified WLAN management/maintenance tool; and (2) real-time traffic support enhancement. We present our on-going efforts as well as some preliminary results. Some issues, which need further attention for the future NESPOT service enhancement, are also introduced.