BCNETwork News

June 2006

EduRoam - It's like Coming Home!

The world of higher education is becoming an increasingly collaborative forum with faculty, staff and students now capable of sharing meetings, discussions and research across institutional boundaries. Although these cooperative relationships frequently occur, there has yet to be a Canadian application that shares wireless access with faculty and staff that are visiting from foreign institutions. Presently, when faculty and staff are working at an offsite campus, they lack the authority to gain wireless Internet access. In a profession in which members frequently travel to foreign campuses, wouldn’t a program that shares wireless connections across institutions help create a sense of being right at home?

Roaming Connections for Higher Education

Since November 2005, BCNET and its Identity Management Working Group (IMWG) have been preparing to launch an application called eduroam – short for Education Roaming. This innovative program will initiate wireless reciprocity among linked educational facilities.

“This is a project that is great for BCNET as a common ground for many institutions and it demonstrates a huge benefit for its members,” says Jens Haeusser, Director of Strategy, Information Technology, University of British Columbia (UBC). Haeusser is also a member of the BCNET IMWG, and is spearheading the eduroam project with IMWG Chair Lionel Tolan, Director
of Academic Computing Services at Simon Fraser University (SFU).

The initiative, which has minimal cost effects due to the reuse of existing infrastructure, will enable faculty and staff to use wireless networks at educational facilities across the country by logging onto a local radius server which will relay their credentials back to their home institution.

This will work by placing two master servers at opposite sides of the country. One will be placed at the BCNET offices in SFU Harbour Centre and another at a location that has yet to be determined.

The Pilot Phase

The IMWG ran a successful short demonstration of the eduroam project in the summer of 2006 - the first of its kind in Canada. Lionel Tolan tested the first phase and successfully logged-in using his home credentials while visiting UBC Robson Square.

“I am a believer of eduroam now more than ever, having felt that sense of welcome that eduroam creates,” says Tolan. “It’s like coming home.”

The goal of the IMWG is to connect eduroam across Canada and eventually link it to the global network, which currently includes Australia, Taiwan and 22 European countries. They also intend to join the eduroam Global Working Group when the project is ready to move to the next level.

“There has not been an initiative comparable to eduroam previously in Canada,” Haeusser explains. “We hope to have the program up and running across Canada by next year. If we can reciprocate parking spots across institutions, then we should be able to do this with wireless connections.”

The eduroam project is another stepping stone on the path towards identity management between universities. It will help increase collaborations between institutions and create a sense of belonging and ease of access for university faculty traveling to campuses nationally and internationally.