By Mary Bull, eduroam Technical Service Manager
In early 2026, eduroam U.S. distributed a survey to eduroam administrators asking how eduroam is deployed at their institutions.
The survey was developed by a working group convened by the eduroam Advisory Committee to gather information for an upcoming rewrite of the eduroam Best Practices Guide. First published in 2020, the eduroam Best Practices guide is a set of recommendations for implementing eduroam in the U.S.
March 2026 IAM Online
eduroam Administrators Survey Discussion: User Education is a Major Challenge
Join us on March 18, 2026, at 1 p.m. ET to learn more about the results from the eduroam Best Practices Guide survey. Contribute to a discussion on eduroam user education and discuss the working group update on eduroam Best Practices.
To prepare for the rewrite, the working group felt it was useful to ask eduroam U.S. administrators about common implementation pain points. Administrators were last surveyed in 2018.
The eduroam Best Practices Guide survey is still open, and we encourage interested administrators to leave their comments. We would like to get as many responses as possible.
Ahead of the new eduroam Best Practices version, InCommon is hosting an IAM Online session to communicate with the eduroam U.S. community about eduroam Best Practices and to collect additional information.
Please join us on March 18, 2026, at 1 p.m. ET for this IAM Online session. The IAM Online is aimed at eduroam administrators and anyone interested in the service, and a report about the survey will be distributed to attendees.
eduroam Best Practices Survey: An Overview
The eduroam Best Practices Guide survey questions addressed several topic areas:
- Size and scope of eduroam deployment
- Ease of configuring or updating eduroam infrastructure
- User management and education
- Impressions of the tools provided by Internet2 as the U.S. National Roaming Operator
Admins who only ran service provider sites (broadcasting the eduroam SSID without adding any users to the service) were not asked about user management.
In addition to identity management questions, the survey included questions about WiFi bands, security practices, and network access offered to visitors. Most respondents stated they run sites that offer both service provider and identity provider configurations.
In the U.S., eduroam is still primarily a higher education service, as it is in most places worldwide. Since 2021, though, kindergarten to twelfth-grade schools have also been eligible to join eduroam U.S. if there is an eduroam support organization operating within their state.
Administrators answering the survey so far, however, have mostly been from higher education institutions, with small and mid-size liberal arts schools in the northeastern U.S. most strongly represented. Community colleges, government research labs, and regional networks are also represented.
All R1 institutions in the U.S. and most R2 institutions are eduroam participants, so we would like to see more people from these institutions offering their thoughts on the survey.
Early Survey Returns
User education emerged as a major challenge in the survey. Configuring the central servers might be challenging the first time, but once the configuration is in place, it is much easier to maintain.
In contrast, it is difficult to communicate with the entire student body and faculty, particularly in a bring-your-own-device environment. Some responses stood out for their creative approach to this issue.
The challenges and opportunities of user management will be discussed in the March 2026 IAM Online. Panelists will comment on the survey results, adding context from their institutional experiences.
eduroam Expertise on the IAM Online Panel
The March 2026 IAM Online panelists are Nadim El-Khoury, CISO at Springfield College, Alicia Marques, network engineer at the Virginia Community College System, and Bryan Ward, lead network engineer at Dartmouth College.
Together, the panelists have extensive experience implementing and discussing eduroam, and serving as a technical resource to other administrators.
Bryan’s name might be familiar to those in the WiFi community, since he has previously spoken about his eduroam experiences. Bryan says the most enjoyable part of deploying eduroam is experiencing its worldwide scope.
“When I travel, getting onto eduroam in unexpected places (like train stations) is always a pleasant surprise,” Bryan said. He got into WiFi administration after starting his career in AV.
Alicia works in the central office of the Virginia Community College System, where she manages the eduroam deployments of the state’s twenty-three community colleges. Her experience advising administrators with varying levels of resources and technical expertise makes her a strong fit to analyze best practices across different settings.
Nadim has implemented eduroam on two continents and successfully advocated to make eduroam a core offering at Springfield College. His experiences making eduroam the primary 802.1X SSID is a real-life example of an eduroam best practice. Nadim is also a member of the Best Practices Guide working group.
Sign Up for the March 2026 IAM Online
Please join us for the discussion on eduroam Best Practices and deployment during the March 2026 IAM Online webinar. Register today to join the discussion on March 18, 2026.
