NowWAP and HTTP Header Enrichment (HHE)

Posted by on Feb 23, 2011 in Support Blog

Topic Keywords: , , ,

The HTTP Header Enrichment (HHE) capability provides solutions for a content provider to identify a subscriber.

Basic HHE allows the subscriber to be identified by their MSISDN.

Aliased HHE allows the subscriber to be identified without divulging the subscriber’s MSISDN.

A standard feature of the NowWAP Proxy is to provide Basic HTTP Header Enrichment to facilitate operator billing for HTTP based services, including Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS).

Basic HHE is enabled for all subscriber HTTP transactions that are forwarded to a configurable list of content provider hosts and/or domains (most frequently these are hosts within the operator domain, such as the operator MMSC). Depending on the information available from the RADIUS accounting feed, this basic information can include the subscriber MSISDN, SGSN IP Address, SGSN MCC & MNC (useful for determining if the client is currently roaming), client IP address (useful for identifying which operator APN was accessed), IMSI, and radio access type (4G, 3G or 2.5G) .

Basic HHE can result in the following HTTP headers being inserted:

X-MSISDN: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
X-WAP-3GPP-SGSN-MCC-MNC: xxxxx
X-WAP-3GPP-SGSN-ADDRESS: 1.2.3.4
X-WAP-3GPP-IMSI: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
X-WAP-3GPP-RAT-TYPE: 1 or 2 (1 = 3G, 2 = EDGE/GPRS) X-WAP-Client-IP: 7.8.9.0

The list of content provider hosts and/or domains that receive this basic HHE is configurable. Host names can be listed here explicitly, such as mmsc.operator.com, or all hosts within a particular domain can be included by adding the domain name to the list prefaced with a “.”, for example .operator.com means that all hosts within the operator.com domain would receive basic HHE (for example, both www.operator.com and mmsc.operator.com).

Basic HHE

In many instances, it is useful to provide similar identifying information to content provider partners, but without divulging the subscriber MSISDN. A new feature of the NowWAP Proxy 2011 release is to provide Aliased HTTP Header Enrichment to meet this need.

Content provider hosts and domains that are to receive Aliased HHE are configured with a list that is similar, but separate from, the existing Basic HHE content provider domain/host list that is configured on the “MSISDN” page of the NowWAP configuration program.

NowWAP does not directly generate the Aliased HHE. Instead, it provides an HTTP callback interface to allow the customer to generate customized Aliased HHE that is appropriate for the target operator environment.

A customer-defined Aliased HHE callback interface is defined to NowWAP by adding the following configuration setting to the [WAPGW] header of WAPGW.INI: HHECallbackURL=http://server/path

When the HHE callback is configured in NowWAP, each time NowWAP receives a RADIUS notification of a new user connecting, NowWAP will make an HTTP GET request to the HHE callback to request HHE/alias information for the user account.

The HHE callback request will include MSISDN, and other RADIUS information, if available.

Example:


http://server/path?PhoneNumber=xxxx
&UserName=xxxxx
&AssignedIP=a.b.c.d
&3GPP-SGSN-MCC-MNC=xxxxx
&3GPP-SGSN-ADDRESS=xx
&3GPP-IMSI=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
&3GPP-RAT-TYPE=x

(Line breaks have been inserted in the URL above for readability only. There are no line breaks in the actual HHE callback URL.)

The “PhoneNumber” (MSISDN) and “AssignedIP” (X-WAP-Client-IP) parameters will always be present.  The 3GPP parameters would be present only if they were presented to NowWAP by the RADIUS feed.

The HHE callback response should be a text response containing enriched HTTP headers to be included in all requests that are processed on behalf of this device.  Example:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain

X-MSISDN-Alias: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
X-HHE-Extra-Info: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As NowWAP processes subsequent requests, if the request is directed to a content domain that receives Aliased HHE, these headers would be included in the HTTP request that is forwarded to the content provider. (Basic HHE would not be forwarded to these content providers.)

The list of content domains to receive Aliased HHE is defined in the WAPGW.INI file, under the [WAPGW] header, using keyword value pairs of the following format:

IncludeHHEForDomain1=.domain1.name
IncludeHHEForDomain2=host.domain2.name
IncludeHHEForDomain3=host.domain3.name

Host names can be listed explicitly, such as www.contentprovider.com, or all hosts within a particular domain can be included by adding the domain name to the list prefaced with a “.”, for example .contentprovider.com means that all hosts within the contentprovider.com domain would receive aliased HHE (for example, both www.contentprovider.com and www2.contentprovider.com).

For comments and further discussion, please click here to visit the NowSMS Technical Forums (Discussion Board)...