1.  It is possible to run your campus as an IdP, SP, or both. Most people 
elect to do both, as we did. You are free not to be an SP, however.
  2.  We use FreeRADIUS, and the configuration is pretty straightforward. The 
easiest thing to do regardless of your current RADIUS infrastructure, in my 
opinion, is to create new FreeRADIUS VMs whose responsibility is to proxy 
authentication requests to your main campus RADIUS servers. That way, there’s 
an extra layer of security between the web and your main auth servers and you 
have another layer of fault/failure protection.
  3.  We had a 9-stage rollout campaign of eduroam, which included a complete 
decommissioning of our college-branded SSID (we are an SP and IdP). We found 
that replacing our primary SSID was essential for people to take advantage of 
eduroam. Without this switchover, we found that we reached a plateau in eduroam 
adoption that rendered the solution of limited value.
The biggest challenge our helpdesk has faced is the change of user account 
format from <username> to <[email protected]>. Many users still struggle 
with that, as I watch all the failed authentications against our eduroam RADIUS 
servers with <username> only. All in all, however, eduroam works no different 
than our original SSID, and from the user’s perspective, the only thing that 
changed was the network name and the username format. I will say, however, that 
the change invited a new wave of scapegoating on the wireless network. Despite 
no actual technical problems with the network, people took the excuse to say 
things like, “Since you guys installed eduroam, my wireless signal has been 
worse!”, even though that obviously has nothing to do with signal strength. So, 
helpdesk had to filter through lots of calls blaming eduroam when in fact the 
problems were related to the user’s device. Finally, you should consider the 
eduroam CAT (configuration assistance tool) for aiding your constituents in 
joining eduroam. It’s a free utility that comes with your eduroam subscription 
and does a pretty great job.

--
Jason Trinklein
Wireless Engineering Manager
College of Charleston
81 St. Philip Street | Office 311D | Charleston, SC 29403
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> | (843) 300–8009
From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
<[email protected]> on behalf of Rita Schnepp 
<[email protected]>
Reply-To: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv 
<[email protected]>
Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2018 at 6:37 PM
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Eduroam - 3 questions

Anyone using EDUROAM? We are thinking about deploying it at our Pepperdine 
Malibu Campus in particular for our students/faculty travelling in Europe...and 
all over the US.   We have 3 questions from an "admin's" perspective:

1)  Can we make our main, authenticating campus which houses the RADIUS server 
just a Connector (and not an SP).  The reason we want this is that we don't 
want to be an SP at our main Malibu Campus because we already have WIFI guest 
access via another method.  Has anyone done this?

2) From our WiFi and Radius tech's perspective, was it as easy to deploy as 
Internet2/Eduroam says it is on their website?

3) How shall we prepare our Help Desk for EDUROAM?  What kinds of calls will 
they get?

Thanks.

Rita

--
Rita Schnepp, PMP, Director, IT Project Management Office
Pepperdine University




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