Supporting network access and service location in dynamic environments

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss large‐scale operational aspects for network service maps and to present technical solutions and evaluation results. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews related work on service discovery specifically for wireless networks and services in, introduces network service maps and their operation in detail and describes their implementation and addresses two specific usage scenarios, based upon which it evaluates its approach through measurements and simulations. Findings – The paper finds that, in the presence of today's ever‐increasing WLAN services, better support for service selection and automated service configuration is an urgent need to enable people to access these new services efficiently and thus increase their value and utilisation further. This is clearly reflected in different solutions being developed by service providers, roaming operators and device manufacturers that aim to facilitate WLAN usage. Originality/value – The ubiquity of WLAN services, ranging from campus networks to commercial hotspots and community WLAN services, requires a new approach for automatically locating and using services. The paper presents a service selection infrastructure that is independent of a user's current network attachment and location in a way that users can obtain information of a specific network (or any other service) without being required to be connected to a particular one. Information about networks and services are distributed in a way that allows for using this information offline, e.g. when still looking for appropriate network access.