Hotspot 2.0/Passpoint in a Nutshell

Introduction

Hotspot 2.0 has been around basically since 2012.
The hope was that there would be a large uptake in this new standard with its features.
It did however never took off for various reasons.
One of the reasons is that there are many gears that has to mesh so to speak before you have a working solution.
Here are a few of the components
- WiFi Access Points that supports Hotspot 2.0.
- RADIUS server that can do EAP Authentication (WPA2 Enterprise)
- PKI infrastructure or a valid certificate issued by a CA
- A valid profile that needs to be installed on the WiFi client device.
With all this the initial barrier is quite strong and the learning curve for a network administrator is steep.
Hotspot 2.0 have however managed to gain some momentum recently due to the following:
- Better support for Hotspot 2.0 in the WiFi supplicant on the major operating systems.
- The spread of OpenRoaming is approaching critical mass.
- Support for Hotspot 2.0 by most hardware manufacturers.
- Growing awareness of the benefits of Hotspot 2.0 among key industry players.
- Mobile companies that wants to offer WiFi offloading as a value added service to their clients.

802.11u is a 2011 amendment to the 802.11 standard that enables seamless Wi-Fi roaming and network discovery (Independent of the SSID of a WiFi network).
Although often used interchangeably with Hotspot 2.0 and Passpoint, these terms have distinct meanings.
While they share common goals and technologies, Hotspot 2.0 typically refers to the Wi-Fi Alliance's certification program, Passpoint is a specific implementation, and 802.11u is the underlying standard.
In practice, however, these terms are often used loosely to refer to the same general concept of advanced Wi-Fi roaming and network selection.
In short, it allows your device to connect to a WiFi network without being dependent on the SSID that is broadcast on the specific WiFi network.
802.11u enables devices to connect to Wi-Fi networks based on other identifiers, such as:
- Domain names
- Roaming consortiums
- Network identifiers
So the key takeaway, 802.11u, Hotspot 2.0 and Passpoint are all part of the same WhatsApp group

Next we will look how this is accomplish on the WiFi Access Point.

With the 802.11u standard there are provision for extra data in the WiFi beacons to indicate the Access Point is Hotspot 2.0 enabled.
The extra data that

GAS provides the framework and transport mechanism for queries and responses, allowing devices to request and receive information about networks.

ANQP is the specific type of information being transported, which includes details about access networks, such as: