Personal Networks and Network Sharing
Devicescape's Easy Wi-Fi system supports powerful personal network provisioning and sharing. This capability, which is integrated into the Managed Supplicant and Hotspot Client modules, allows users to quickly manage their devices together from a simple web-based portal. Furthermore, users can share their own personal networks with friends and family, to simplify network access and avoid exposure of their security keys.
To enable automatic access to their personal network, a user enters profile information for their network (via the Devicescape website or similar means). The profile for this personal network is then provisioned over-the-air into the user’s device. However, since such networks do not require credentials, there is no need for the device to contact the Devicescape web service when it seeks to connect to one of these networks – the device will locally have sufficient information to fully connect and authenticate itself.
Networking Sharing with Friends and Family
Using a feature called “Wi-Fi Buddies”, a user can also grant friends access to their home Wi-Fi network. Similar to the way an instant messaging service works, the user invites friends to become buddies and share the user’s Wi-Fi network via the Devicescape website. Invited users receive an automated email describing how to utilize the Easy Wi-Fi service and receive Easy Wi-Fi clients. If these friends accept the invitation, then any Easy Wi-Fi enabled devices they use are automatically provisioned to use the inviter’s home network.
Later, if a user changes security keys or the networks they share, an automated update will be done to all of their "buddies" devices. Similarly, "buddies" can be deleted, which will ultimately result in the network profile being removed from any "buddies" devices.
A user can also ask one of their friends to grant them access to their personal Wi-Fi network. Again using the web interface, the user makes a request to gain access to the personal Wi-Fi network of a friend. If the friend accepts the request, then the originating user’s devices are provisioned with the friend’s personal network profile.
Learning More
Learn more about Easy Wi-Fi Managed Hotspot Client in the detailed white paper.