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eduroam (''edu''cation ''roam''ing) is an international
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...
internet access Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide ...
roaming Roaming is a wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information (''telecommunication'') between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or oth ...
service for users in research,
higher education Tertiary education (higher education, or post-secondary education) is the educational level following the completion of secondary education. The World Bank defines tertiary education as including universities, colleges, and vocational schools ...
and
further education Further education (often abbreviated FE) in the United Kingdom and Ireland is additional education to that received at secondary school that is distinct from the higher education (HE) offered in universities and other academic institutions. It ...
. It provides researchers, teachers, and students network access when visiting an institution other than their own. Users are authenticated with credentials from their home institution, regardless of the location of the eduroam access point. Authorization to access the Internet and other resources are handled by the visited institution. Users do not have to pay to use eduroam. In some countries, Internet access via eduroam is also available at other locations than the participating institutions, e.g. in libraries, public buildings, railway stations, city centres and airports. It is also available at many primary and secondary education institutions in Brazil and the US.


History

The eduroam initiative started in 2002 when during the preparations for the creation of
TERENA The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA, ) was a not-for-profit association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The association was originally ...
's task force TF-Mobility, Klaas Wierenga of
SURFnet SURF (short for Samenwerkende Universitaire Rekenfaciliteiten, "Cooperating University Computing Facilities") is an organization that develops, implements and maintains the national research and education network (NREN) of the Netherlands. It opera ...
shared the idea of combining a
RADIUS In classical geometry, a radius (: radii or radiuses) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its Centre (geometry), center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The radius of a regular polygon is th ...
-based infrastructure with IEEE 802.1X technology to provide roaming network access across research and education networks. Initially, the service was joined by institutions in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Portugal, Croatia and the United Kingdom. Later, other NRENs in Europe embraced the idea and started joining the infrastructure, which was then called eduroam. Since 2004, the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
co-funded further research and development work related to the eduroam service through the GN2 and GN3 projects. From September 2007, the European Union also funded through these projects the continued operation and maintenance of the eduroam service at the European level. The first non-European country to join eduroam was Australia, in December 2004. In Canada, eduroam started as an initiative of the
University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...
, which was later taken over by
CANARIE CANARIE (formerly the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education) is the not-for-profit organisation which operates the national backbone network of Canada's national research and education network (NREN). The org ...
as a service of its Canadian Access Federation. In the United States, eduroam was initially a pilot project between the
National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
and the
University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...
(UTK). In 2012,
Internet2 Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must ...
announced the addition of eduroam to its NET+ service offerings. AnyRoam LLC, a private company, was formed by former UTK staff to serve as an Internet2 active corporate member administering the US top-level servers. In 2021, Internet2 assumed direct management of the eduroam service for US-based organizations.


Technology

The eduroam service uses IEEE 802.1X as the
authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an Logical assertion, assertion, such as the Digital identity, identity of a computer system user. In contrast with iden ...
method and a hierarchical system of
RADIUS In classical geometry, a radius (: radii or radiuses) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its Centre (geometry), center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The radius of a regular polygon is th ...
servers. The hierarchy consists of RADIUS servers at the participating institutions, national RADIUS servers run by the National Roaming Operators, and regional top-level RADIUS servers for individual world regions. When a user visits a remote institution, the user's mobile device presents their credentials to the local RADIUS server. That RADIUS server discovers that it is not responsible for the realm of the user's home institution and proxies the access request to the national RADIUS server. If the visited institution is in a different country than the home institution, the request is in turn proxied to the regional top-level RADIUS server, and then to the national RADIUS server of the user's home country. That national server forwards the credentials to the home institution, where they are verified. The RADIUS response travels back over the proxy-hierarchy to the visited institution and the user is granted access. Because the user's credentials travel via a number of intermediate servers, not under the control of the home institution of the user, it is important that the credentials be protected. This requirement limits the types of authentication methods that can be used. There are two categories of useful authentication methods: those that use credentials in the form of some
public-key Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...
mechanism with certificates and those that use so-called tunnelled authentication. Most institutions use a tunnelled authentication method that only requires server certificates. These server certificates are used to set up a secure tunnel between the mobile device and the authentication server, through which the user credentials are securely transported. A complication arises if the user's home institution does not use a two-letter country-code top-level domain as part of its realm, but a
generic top-level domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of ev ...
such as .edu or .org. By inspection of such realms, it is not possible to determine which national RADIUS server the request should be routed to. Such domains will thus, by default, fail to work in international roaming. The workaround for this problem involves the creation of exceptions in the international RADIUS request routing tables; however, this workaround does not scale as the number of exception entries grows. Several solutions have been proposed to eliminate this workaround in the future, the most promising of which is ''RADIUS over TLS with Dynamic Discovery'', which does not rely on static routing tables inside a RADIUS server configuration to route requests to their proper destination. Instead, the participating institution adds one NAPTR
DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various informatio ...
resource record to its own domain's DNS zone, which states by which server eduroam authentication for the domain is handled.


Governance

GÉANT has established a lightweight global governance structure. Recognising the large variety in the organisation and funding of research and education (networking) in different countries and regions, rules imposed on the operations of eduroam are limited to technical and administrative requirements that are necessary to ensure the smooth and secure operations of eduroam worldwide. Moreover, the eduroam operators have the leading role in creating and maintaining the rules of the global eduroam governance. The Global eduroam Governance Committee (GeGC) has the central role in the global eduroam governance structure. While its structure has evolved over time, it presently has three representatives from each of five regions — mirroring those used by the
Regional Internet registries A regional Internet registry (RIR) is an organization that manages the allocation and registration of Internet number resources within a region of the world. Internet number resources include IP addresses and autonomous system (Internet), autonom ...
— serving a two-year term. In addition, GÉANT may appoint one or more experts as non-voting members of the GeGC.


Geographical deployment

eduroam is available at selected locations in countries with a National Roaming Operator that has signed the eduroam Compliance Statement. Those sixty-seven countries are listed below. In addition, there may be pilot deployments in countries that are in the process of joining eduroam.


Middle East

eduroam is deployed in:


Europe

The NRENs that are members of the consortium of the GN3 project have joined the ''European eduroam confederation'' by signing the confederation's policy that requires its members to comply with a set of technical and organisational requirements, which are more specific than those in the global eduroam Compliance Statement. As a consequence, eduroam is deployed in the following countries: In addition, three NRENs that are associate members of the consortium of the GN3 project without voting rights joined the European eduroam confederation; they represent Belarus ( UIIP), Moldova ( RENAM) and Russia (Joint Supercomputer Center of the
Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...
). Finally, five NRENs not involved in the GN3 project joined the European eduroam confederation on a voluntary basis, enabling the deployment of the service in: The European top-level RADIUS servers are operated by SURFnet and Forskningsnettet.


Asia-Pacific

eduroam is deployed in the following countries and economies: The Asia-Pacific top-level RADIUS servers are operated by AARNet and by the
University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as the University of ...
.


North America

eduroam is deployed in:


Latin America

eduroam is deployed in:


Africa

eduroam is deployed in: The inter-African RADIUS servers are operated by West-African research and education networ
WACREN
the UbuntuNet Alliance and TENET.


See also

* Fon Wireless


References


External links

*{{Official website, https://www.eduroam.org/ Academic computer network organizations Computer networks Information technology organizations based in Europe Science and technology in Europe Wi-Fi providers