Provisioning Methods And Apparatus For Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANS) With Use Of A Provisioning ESSID

A wireless network has a primary network which provides one or more communication services and a provisioning network which provides a provisioning service but disallows the one or more communication services. A mobile device associates with an access point of the wireless network by sending a request which includes a first set service identifier (SSID) for accessing and operating in the provisioning network. If an authentication procedure is successful, the device receives via the access point a second SSID in a provisioning procedure with the provisioning network, and programs the second SSID in a network list. The device subsequently associates with the access point by sending a request which includes the second SSID from the network list instead of the first SSID, for accessing and operating in the primary network for the one or more communication services.