University Networks are Becoming More Portable

Professors, students and staff who are visiting other universities  will be able to gain network access there through a global initiative that's made its way to the U.S.

Internet2 — a consortium of U.S. research and education institutions — announced on Tuesday, Oct. 2, its plan to bring a federation called eduroam to the United States. Eduroam is a worldwide federation of RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) servers designed for the international research and education community. The federation started in Europe and is making it easier for visiting faculty and students who are studying abroad to access the network on college campuses that are not their home institution. It also cuts out administrative steps to permitting this access.

The National Science Foundation, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Internet2 are working together to support eduroam in the United States. Internet2 members will be able to use the service at no extra charge, while other interested universities and research labs can pay an annual fee to subscribe.

Here's how it works, according to eduroam-US. Say a professor from UCLA visits the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus. An authentication client on the professor's computing device creates an encrypted tunnel from the device to UCLA's RADIUS server. The RADIUS networking protocol tries to authenticate the user and either accepts or rejects the request. If it accepts the credentials, then University of Tennessee, Knoxville, gives the professor the same access to the network as its professors have.