Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
By Jody Tracy, InCommon Academy Program Manager
In October 2024, the eduroam Advisory Committee (eAC) presented an IAM Online webinar on things you can do to improve your users’ security on eduroam. That presentation introduced the process the committee was undertaking to set new Baseline Expectations to make eduroam more secure.
This marked the beginning of an important conversation about the future of eduroam service quality as the network continues to expand beyond its roots in higher education into K-12 schools, libraries, and other community institutions.
Now, one year later, the vision is taking concrete shape. In this month’s IAM Online webinar, held on Oct. 15 at 1 p.m. ET, eAC members Derek Eiler and Mike Dickson will introduce the eduroam Baseline Expectations framework. The framework is a set of standards designed to ensure consistent service quality.
As eduroam grows and matures, these expectations represent the community’s commitment to maintaining the trusted, seamless connectivity that has made eduroam a valuable resource for millions of users.
Whether your institution deployed eduroam years ago and hasn’t revisited the configuration, or you’re actively working to optimize your service, this session will provide practical guidance on what these new standards mean for your organization and how to prepare for implementation.
What you’ll learn:
- The five pillars shaping eduroam’s future
- What Baseline Expectations mean for your institution or organization
- How these standards will ensure reliable and seamless access for stakeholders
Speakers
network engineer, University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Role/Title: Network engineer
- Number of Years in Current Role: 20+ years
- Total Years at Institution/Organization: 25+ years
- Best IAM Advice You Ever Received: “Design for least privilege, but plan for on-the-fly elevation.”
principal systems engineer, Nevada System of Higher Education
- Role/Title: Principal systems engineer
- Number of Years in Current Role: 5 years
- Total Years at Institution/Organization: 11 years
- Best IAM Advice You Ever Received: “If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.”
Ahead of the October IAM Online session, we reached out to Mike and Derek to hear about their work on developing the eduroam Baseline Expectations.
Here is what they had to say:
Over the past few years, eduroam membership in the US has experienced
significant growth. Many eduroam deployments were completed several years ago, and the original
implementers left.
Offering a baseline set of expectations for eduroam helps IT
departments easily identify the information needed to ensure a successful eduroam deployment at
their location.
Individual organizations typically operate within policy and technical
frameworks that they have developed internally. This helps them scale operational and
technological processes within the scope of the organization.
In a federated service
such as eduroam, each organization’s expectations might look different. Developing a common set
of baseline expectations for planning, deploying, and maintaining eduroam helps manage
expectations within and among organizations.
We also need to be mindful that eduroam
is an international service in which the U.S. (via Internet2) is just one party.
One of the items we are working on is making specific recommendations for
enhancements to eduroam reporting processes that are meant to provide a clearer understanding of
how an organization’s eduroam deployment is working, both for their own users (i.e., as an IdP)
and for Visitors from participating organizations (i.e., as an SP).
The eduroam
Baseline Expectations document will serve as the “What,” and the eAC envisions publishing a
guidance document around the same time to serve as the “How”. We hope that communications, such
as the upcoming IAM Online presentation, will be another valuable resource.
The eAC has been modeling the eduroam-U.S. Baseline Expectations work on
the community’s past efforts toward Baseline Expectations for Federation, using Baseline Processes 1 Roadmap for
guidance.
The original framework of eduroam Baseline Expectations was developed
within a dedicated Working Group of the eAC. This was then shared with the broader eAC for
additional input and review before being shared with the community at Mobility Day and ACAMP at
TechEX24 for feedback. After further revisions based on that feedback and additional feedback by
the eAC, the document was sent to other advisory committees for further review, including CTAB
and TAC.
We hope the upcoming IAM Online generates more community feedback, and plan
to bring the document to the Steering Committee for review soon. Following another round of
feedback at TechEx25, we hope to finally bring this to InCommon for a
final consultation, review, and adoption.
Having a clear and peer-reviewed set of Baseline Expectations that is
distributed to all U.S. member institutions enables eduroam to be deployed in a way that ensures
a consistently high level of health and quality throughout the community.
Whether
your organization is large or small, already uses eduroam or is getting started, is in higher
education or K-12, or offers eduroam as a public service to your educators, researchers, and
students, we expect the new eduroam-U.S. Baseline Expectations to lay the foundation for a
stronger, more cohesive federation.
Join Us for IAM Online
Ready to learn actionable next steps for your institution, whether you’re running a basic deployment or actively optimizing your eduroam service? Don’t miss our upcoming webinar, “Raising the Bar: Introducing Baseline Expectations for eduroam” on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 1 p.m. ET.
Please note: We’ve introduced a new, improved registration process for our webinars. You’ll now register individually for each webinar, which allows us to deliver content that’s even more aligned with what you want to see. Get ready for more engaging, community-driven webinars designed with you in mind!
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