Why Not Eduroam?

The 7/8/2010 IAM Online presentation has shown that eduroam is further along in the US than thought when we started this project. This page contains thoughts about whether we should shift our emphasis to eduroam-US.

• Eduroam's service model is that of a giant federation of hot spots, all with the same SSID.  People just use that SSID wherever they are, even at their home institution.  It's more convenient.
  • It does require 802.1x.  Are the classes of devices that would be excluded? Is configuring the supplicant too burdensome for some users? Are any of the UC campuses running 802.1x using supplicant configuration tools today? Would we still want the federated log-in functionally for our non-802.11x capture portals? Any campuses opposed to starting a new 802.1x service?
• There's no formal organization or agreement.  This can have impacts on support, response to security incidents, etc.
  • They may need to start asking for support money at some point.
  • InCommon is looking at how they could help here.
  • This is probably not an issue among UC campuses.  We already have ways to deal with this.
• Eduroam (currently) has no way to exclude members of campus communities.  If you can authenticate at your home institution, you can be a guest at other eduroam institutions.
  • This would require policy change for some UC locations.