Pepwave True Address Gateway

Inexpensive and Seamless Wi-Fi Network Expansion

Introducing the innovative Pepwave True Address Gateway (TAG) designed to overcome a common problem faced by wireless Internet service providers. Coupled with the Pepwave Devices, the integrated solution allows service providers to expand wireless coverage economically.

Using a Wi-Fi repeater is an inexpensive way to extend high performance wireless networks, however it can cause issues with some providers' network authentication because end-user MAC addresses are lost in transit as the Wi-Fi repeater rewrites the network packets with its own MAC address.

By providing the existing subscriber gateway with the correct end-user layer-2 identification, Pepwave TAG provides a drop-in solution to overcome this issue without any changes to the providers' existing network.

Illustration: TAG and Pepwave Devices provide an integrated solution to
extend wireless coverage, while maintaining authentication integrity.

Highlights

True MAC Address Identification - TAG enables MAC address identification by restoring the true MAC address information of each individual end-user.

Individual Customer Access Control - TAG allows WISPs to control the network access of each individual end-user in hospitality, convention, and hotspot areas.

Ease of Deployment - TAG interfaces with the centralized Access Gateway. It can be drop-in deployed on an existing network infrastructure without any configuration changes to existing devices.

Discover Wireless Users True Identity - TAG attacks limitations in the 802.11 protocol standards that cause the loss of users' MAC addresses when using Wi-Fi repeaters

• Collect Users True MAC Addresses - TAG receives user IP and MAC address information from one or multiple Pepwave devices
  
• Restore True MAC Addresses - TAG provides instantaneous MAC address translation and restores users true MAC addresses as traffic passing through

• Drop-in Installation - Simply configure TAG for your network, and plug it in.
  
• Keep your configuration - TAG requires no configuration changes to your existing infrastructure
  

• Fully Compatible with Existing Subscriber Gateway - Since TAG transparently re-writes network packets before the subscriber gateway, the gateway only sees the correct identification
  
• Layer-2 Authentication - Mesh connector relays each end-users layer-2 information to TAG before the information is lost in transit, allowing for true Layer-2 authentication
  

• Make mesh make sense - Pepwave Wi-Fi Devices and TAG work with your existing Wi-Fi mesh to extend wireless coverage beyond the street level to popular indoor locations