Internet2 NET+ eduroam service to offer wireless Internet access for professors, students, and staff

Internet2 plans to offer the eduroam wireless Internet service to more than 220 of Internet2’s universities and research labs, and to all other universities and colleges throughout the United States. The announcement was made today at the 2012 Internet2 Fall Member Meeting in Philadelphia.

Professors, students and staff at the nation’s largest research universities and labs will have easy and secure access to network connectivity across their own campus, and when visiting other participating institutions, by simply opening a laptop, or activating a smartphone or other portable device.

Internet2, in a partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the University of Tennessee – Knoxville has assumed support for the deployment of eduroam in the United States. Through this partnership, Internet2 is working with the NSF to broadly increase the deployment of the eduroam service. Eduroam, which started as an international project in Europe, involves many National Research and Education Network organizations.

“Professors, students and staff at Internet2 member universities will be able to roam their fellow campuses without the hassle of gaining Internet access,” said Internet2 CEO and President H. David Lambert. “This is a great example of the University of Tennessee’s visionary support of eduroam being deployed in the United States and NSF’s leadership for providing seed funding to enable Internet2 to expand this service to Internet2’s universities and labs.”

The service is provided as an Internet2 member benefit as part of the annual membership fee. Higher educational institutions that are not Internet2 members are invited to join the service for an annual fee. Universities interested in subscribing and deploying the Internet2 NET+ eduroam wireless service should email netplus@internet2.edu for assistance.

Eduroam allows travelers from academic institutions to gain network access with minimal configuration and no need for the visited institution to explicitly grant access. This benefits faculty visiting labs, people traveling for conferences and collaborative work, students studying abroad, visitors attending sporting activities, and others roaming Internet2 campuses. There are thousands of eduroam hotspots to join, without hassle or data roaming charges.

“I am thrilled with this announcement,” said Jack Suess, vice president and chief information officer of University of Maryland, Baltimore County and former chair of Internet2’s Applications, Middleware, and Services Advisory Council (AMSAC). “This is a major milestone because AMSAC passed a resolution asking Internet2 to take the lead in seeing eduroam broadly deployed in the United States’ R&E community.”

This service works without the need to gain guest credentials on arrival to an eduroam-enabled campus. The connectivity is instantaneous, and the user authenticates the infrastructure. A user’s credentials are not revealed to the institution visited, but instead are only revealed to the person’s home institution, which provides an extra measure of comfort for visiting users. The technology provides a simple and automatic guest provisioning system, a secure wireless connection, encryption and authentication through WPA2-Enterprise standards.

Internet2 NET+ Services create a platform tailored to the needs of the Internet2 community, are cost and administratively effective, and leverage the Internet2 100G Network and InCommon identity management services. There are now 29 providers and 150 universities in the program. Internet2 NET+ Services and the Internet2 Network enable transformational solutions for education delivery and provide better-yielding solutions for university business functions – helping higher education institutions remain competitive nationally and globally.

Before an Internet2 NET+ Service is offered to the Internet2 community, it is put through a series of increasingly rigorous tests. Each phase brings the service closer to production, until it is made available to all eligible institutions. A complete listing of the 29 Internet2 NET+ Services and the development phase of each service can be found at www.internet2.edu/netplus. For more information about Internet2 NET+ eduroam, visit www.internet2.edu/netplus/eduroam.