URAN Association

eduroam - inter-NREN wireless LAN roaming

"Open your laptop and be online!"

eduroam (education roaming) is secure access to the Wi-Fi network developed for the international science and education community and available worldwide. Technically this is a federated authentication service that allows users from participating institutions to gain secure access to wireless network access using their standard username/password credentials as they do at their home institution for wireless access. Following initial mobile device configuration, eduroam can enable access without the user having to enter any details, simply open your laptop or activate mobile device and if its wireless enabled it will connect to eduroam, authenticate and authorise network access.

eduroam hotspots can be found all around the world. Please see the coverage map of eduroam for the exact locations.

eduroam is an example of an identity federation between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and their connected institutions (universities, schools, libraries, research centres etc.). This means that all involved institutions mutually trust each other: if a user has a valid account at one of the institutions, he will be allowed to access the network at all other institutions.

eduroam in Europe is managed in each country by its respective national research and education network (NRENs); in Ukraine, this is URAN.

Benefits your campus and improves productivity of IT Support staff

With eduroam, your campus becomes more attractive as a venue for meetings and conferences, as it allows participants to access the network without assistance, and without tying up your facilities.

The cost of implementing and maintaining eduroam is modest. The service results in significant cost savings through reduced IT department workload:

• eduroam provides a single solution that accommodates all the mobile connectivity requirements of an institution, supporting
  1. local users connecting to the local network,
  2. visitors connecting to the local network and
  3. local users connecting to other participating networks.
      
• eduroam removes the need to supply temporary accounts to visiting users, so reducing the administrative and support burden imposed by the ever-growing movement of students and researchers between institutions and countries.

eduroam basics

There are a few 'basics' that should be understood by operators and users of eduroam::

1. The main purpose of eduroam is to provide automatic network access to R&E users when they travel from their 'home' institution to other R&E institutions. This is achieved by all institutions broadcasting a common SSID, "eduroam", which is configured in the institution's wireless infrastructure to trigger remote authentication of visitors and local authentication of the institution's own users (the protocol used is IEEE 802.1x). Users configure their mobile devices for automatic connection to the "eduroam" SSID, and specify their eduroam username as <institutional_username>@<institutional_realm>. The <institutional_realm> component of the username is used by eduroam infrastructure to route the authentication request to the user's home institution.
    
2. User's credendials remain secret between the user's device (where the eduroam username and home institution password are entered) and the user's home institution, through use of an encrypted tunnel between them to transfer the user's credentials. The encrypted tunnel is created between user device and home institution as the first stage of eduroam remote authentication. The second stage is the actual user authentication via the tunnel.
    
3. There are two roles that institutions have in participating in eduroam. The 'Service Provider' (SP) role involves providing access to the institution's network by virtue of a visitor's remote authentication via eduroam infrastructure. The 'Identity Provider' (IdP) role involves the institution authenticating their users remotely via the eduroam infrastructure.
    
4. The eduroam SP role, i.e. providing network access to visitors, relies on the institution's existing network infrastructure. Typically, the 'eduroam' network access is understood to mean wireless network access. Institutions can also use eduroam for providing wired network access to visitors, however this is relatively uncommon. A pre-requisite to eduroam participation is that SP institutions have fully operational wireless network infrastructure.
    
5. In order for eduroam to provide 'automatic network access', users need to configure their devices for automatic 'connection' to the "eduroam" SSID. There are two parts to this. First, connection across the wireless network to the visited institutions wireless access points. The wireless encyption used is "WPA2-Enterprise" ( IEEE 802.1x + CCMP/AES) - by eduroam global policy this must be supported by institutions. The second part of the 'connection' is remote authentication by the user's home institution. Authentication uses a secure tunnel to protect credentials from being exposed, and the two prevalent protocols are PEAP/MSCHAPv2 or TTLS/PAP. The authentication protocol is specific to the home institution.
    
6. As authentication configuration is home institution specific, it is strongly recommended that users configure their eduroam connection while on their home institution campus. If issues are encountered, request assistance from local IT support. If you wait until you travel before configuring connection to eduroam, your local support may not be able to assist due to visited institution issues which are of course outside the home institution support staff's scope of visibility.

eduroam managed IdP - technical solution for small institutions

The deployment of a full-service eduroam requires several technical and organizational measures that mean additional financial, human and time resources:

1. to implement a set of hardware and software, in particular, to deploy RADIUS-server authorizing users. The purchase of the server and configuration of the software requires additional funds and training of technical staff to ensure its special knowledge and skills;
    
2. in the future, to keep a database of users specifying their credentials. It requires additional worktime of IT staff.

For small science and education institutions whith several dozen users, this is an obstacle, often insurmountable.

To facilitate the connection of small organizations to eduroam GÉANT has developed the eduroam managed IdP service. This is a web portal that contains an access page for a small institution. On this page, the representative of the institution itself enters data about its organization and begins to create a database of its users, and those already themselves are authorized in the eduroam system. The only restriction is no more than 200 users per institution. There is no need to buy and configure the RADIUS server.

The eduroam access point will not be in this facility, but its staff will be able to use eduroam wherever such access points already exist.

If, however, the institution will eventually decide to set up its own access point then the URAN Association can connect it to its own RADIUS server, and this institution will be able to authorize eduroam users.

For consultations please contact the URAN technical department at the e-mail

See more at eduroam.uran.ua and www.eduroam.org.