Distributed authentication and authorization architecture for multi-service, multi-provider networks

This paper describes an architecture for authentication, authorization, accounting and billing that allows users to obtain services provided by different internet service providers with single registration. The architecture proposed supports both free and paid services and allows users to use paid services provided by multiple providers with a single contact point for billing and charging. The solution proposed is based on a cooperative trust model between internet service providers that allows them to share information for users’ authentication and authorization. We provide the architecture proposed with a signaling model based on the DIAMETER, TLS (Transport Layer Security), XML (Extensible Markup Language) and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) (HTTP) protocols.