> On Aug 15, 2017, at 10:47 AM, Jeffrey D. Sessler <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Couple of comments: > > eduroam – using your point of “…most users can access what they want > off-campus…”, what long-term value is there to eduroam? IMHO – not at lot. > Back in the day, this would facilitate quick access for a visiting educator > who may be collaborating with someone locally and needing access to local > resources. Today, in age of cloud-based collaboration platforms and access > from anywhere, how important is eduroam over an open wifi network? With few > exceptions, all the visitor needs is Internet access. eduroam doesn’t add > value here, but does add complexity to manage.
I will not argue against Open WiFi networks… I miss them big time ! (and I’m not talking about those pesky ones that make you watch an advertisement and/or shut off after 30 minutes) eduroam was created in Europe because many states have non-competitive requirements for Internet Access. A state provided resource cannot always be shared with the general public in many countries, and eduroam is an acceptable solution to their regulators. If I remember well some states in the US (or even Local Gov) have similar requirements. With the other various legal requirements that we face in the US (DMCA, CALEA, …) it seems that eduroam answers at least a few of them and allows schools to give instant access to visiting Faculty/Staff/Students without having to bug those users for local sponsored accounts. Which CIO will let you have an Open WiFi today? For a campus in a rural environment, why not. For a campus in a populated city, you better hone your bandwidth contract skills, and the user experience will most likely suffer. Rural or not, I still would like an eduroam flag on the map for Antartica ;-) Philippe Philippe Hanset, CEO www.anyroam.net www.eduroam.us +1 (865) 236-0770 GPG key id: 0xF2636F9C ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/discuss.
