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eduroam Review

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Sara Jeanes

Brett Bieber

February 3rd, 2025

internet2.edu

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  1. Level set
  2. Who is the eduroam Advisory Committee?
  3. What we’re paying attention to today
  4. What we’re paying attention to in 2025+

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Current state of eduroam US

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What is eduroam?

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  • Federated authentication service for global wireless access for the research and education community

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  • Participating institutions provide access to their wireless networks to users from other eduroam connected institutions.

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  • Users are authenticated by their home institutions.

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What is eduroam?

  • Created by and for education community
  • Over 106 nations are part of the global eduroam community
  • National Roaming Operators (NROs) manage the service in their country, cooperate internationally
  • NROs ensure eduroam is secure and effective at home and across the world. Internet2 is the NRO for the US
  • eduroam globally is overseen by the Global eduroam Governance Committee (GeGC), homed out of GEANT

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eduroam service Portfolio - our two services

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(2) K12, Museums, and Libraries

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  • Delivered by state-based eduroam Support Organizations (eSO)
  • Internet2 supports the eSOs in their deployments
  1. Higher Education & Research [classic]

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  • Delivered directly by InCommon Team at Internet2

Internet2/InCommon provides the underlying trust, security, and routing for both services

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Current subscribers to eduroam Higher education and Research [classic] and eduroam Support Organization [K12] services

  • 1,174 direct subscribers

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  • 349 K12s, libraries, museums, and hotspots via the eduroam Support Organization Program

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  • 3,453 service locations in the US (second highest in the world)

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eduroam Support Organization subscribers

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

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eduroam is Growing! - overall growth on national infrastructure

  • Increasing number of devices being deployed, driving increase in authentications

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  • More hotspots = fewer local authentications, more load on national infrastructure

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  • eduroam Support Organizations driving the largest increases in traffic

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eduroam is Growing! - projecting the rapid expansion generated from eSO subscribers’ K12 locations and user devices

  • In 2020, the eduroam team scaled ‘for the next 1000 subscribers’. This round of growth is activating the next phase of scaling eduroam.�
  • eSOs subscribers are driving more traffic onto national infrastructure
    • Practice of deploying central IdP with schools acting as hotspots. Little local authentication, lots of traffic sent to the national level
    • Heavy HE use of eSO hotspots as well

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  • Under current model, by 2030 eSO subscribers are projected to make up 75% of all authentications (but only account for 33% of all users)

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SJ last slide

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Who is the eduroam Advisory Committee?

BB first slide

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Current State of eduroam - eduroam Advisory Committee—est. 2019

Representation:

  • Higher Ed, K12, eduroam Support Organizations
  • Private industry and international NRENS
  • Vice-Chair Jeff Egly to retire in March 2025

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Four Working Groups:

Artifacts:

  • eAC Charter
  • eAC Minutes

Chair & Vice-Chair

Brett Bieber - University of Nebraska [eSO]

Jeff Egly - UETN (Utah Education and Telehealth Network) [eSO]

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Members:

Kendra Ard - California State University Office of the Chancellor

Dion Baird - University IT, Oregon State University

John Buysse - University of Notre Dame

Amel Caldwell - University of Washington [eSO]

Mike Dickson - University of Massachusetts Amherst

Derek Eiler - Nevada System of Higher Education [eSO]

Nadim El-Khoury - Springfield College

Rob Gorrell - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Michael Hacker - University Heights Charter School District

Saira Hasnain - University of Florida

Jeremy Livingston - Stevens Institute of Technology

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Subject Matter Experts (non-voting):

Tim Cappalli - Okta

Josh Howlett - Federated Solutions

Tom Rixom - SecureW2

Stefan Winter - Restena and Network Security Proliferation UG

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13�members

4

SMEs

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This is what we are paying attention to today

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Consideration - rapid expansion of K12 locations and user devices

  • Increasing number of devices being deployed

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  • More hotspots = fewer local authentications, more load on national infrastructure

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  • eduroam Support Organizations driving the largest increases in traffic

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Addressed eduroam scaling considerations - 2024

  • Community Consultations
    • Engage with populations that are driving the most growth, identify opportunities to reduce infrastructure load
      • eduroam Support Organizations
      • Large hotspot deployments (ISPs, municipalities, other consortia)

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  • Infrastructure Improvements
    • Increasing traffic capacity of top level RADIUS servers (TLRS)
    • Optimize internal routing of authentication traffic
    • Improve rate limiting and load balancing

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  • Scalability Testbed
    • Test and validate proposed improvements at scale before deployment

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  • Logging and Reporting Enhancements
    • Additional detail in Log Viewer
    • Overhaul reporting engine

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This is what we are paying attention to into 2025 and beyond

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Service Portfolio Themes driving work - 2025

  1. Service Resilience
    1. Baseline Expectations
    2. Security enhancements
    3. Terms of Service update permitting Rate Limiting

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  • Service Ease of Use
    • Reporting refresh

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  • Attracting New Market Segments to eduroam Higher Ed and Research (eduroam classic)
    • Web presence refresh
    • Cloud Infrastructure aaS working group�
  • Growing Existing Markets
    • eduroam Support Organization - Call for Interest 2025

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  1. Cloud Infrastructure
  2. Baseline Expectations
  3. From the Desk of…
  4. Mobility Day (on hiatus)

eAC Working Groups

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Problem: Constituents want simpler radius solutions, ideally in the cloud

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Approach:

  • Identify challenges of multi-tenant cloud hosting
  • Discuss possible solutions with vendors, provide recommendations
  • Examples:
    • How could we enable multi-tenant cloud-based providers to integrate their authentication services with eduroam without the need for on-prem appliances or servers?
  • How would the eduroam-US management infrastructure need to change to allow it?
  • What about RadSec?

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Output:

  • Recommendations and guidance for vendors, catalyst partners, InCommon NRO

eAC Cloud Infrastructure Working Group

Artifacts:

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eduroam Baseline Expectations Working Group

Problem: Inconsistent user experience, need to elevate security, �strive towards performance and operational excellence

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Approach:

  • Following in the footsteps of the “other federation” Baseline Expectations (2018-19)
  • Areas of focus:
    • User Experience
    • Security/Privacy
    • Performance and Operational Excellence
  • Start conversation with the community at TechEx 2024, continue throughout 2025
  • Long, 2+ year timeline for implementation

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Output:

  • Set of high-level statements as guiding principles for eduroam deployments
  • Community engagement through communication

Artifacts:

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Problem: No well-established communication channels from eAC to community, many topics require more context

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Approach:

  • Members of the eAC author short informative pieces
  • Expound upon eAC discussion topics to add nuance and context
  • Establish and exercise communication channels with the community
  • Build awareness of the eAC

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Output:

  • Publish quarterly short informative pieces

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“From the desk of the eAC” Working Group

Artifacts:

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Questions

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