Broadcom Corporation

Edward Rodriguez De Castro

Simon Barber

Roy Petruschka

A system and method in which user management and radio management functionalities associated with a wireless network, such as an IEEE 802.11 wireless network, are integrated to provide wireless network services thereof. In general, according to the present invention disclosed herein, a link layer authentication module for linking a plurality of wireless network layers to one another is integrated with a network management module, such that the network management module and the link layer authentication module together form an integrated user and radio management module which provides wireless network services for the wireless network. The use of link layer authentication under the IEEE 802.1x standard can be integrated with network management functionality thereof in order to associate both and provide a variety of useful wireless network services.

Integrated user and radio management in a wireless network environment

A system and method for restricting access to a wireless network is disclosed herein. One or more access points are generally associated with the wireless network (e.g., an IEEE 802.11 wireless network), and a visitor gateway for automatically preventing visiting user from directly entering the wireless network. A command and control center communicates with the access points and the visitor gateway and controls data transfer and routing thereof. The visitor gateway can communicate with a remote computer network (e.g., the Internet) and restricts access to the wireless network by a visiting user through or from the remote computer network. The command and control center also can automatically route the visiting user to the visitor gateway when the visiting user attempts to access an access point associated with the wireless network.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Edward Rodriguez De Castro