Utilising eduroamTM architecture in building wireless community networks

Abstract

Purposeeduroam™ has already been proved to be a scalable, secure and feasible way for universities and research institutions to connect their wireless networks into a WLAN roaming community, but the advantages of eduroam™ have not yet been fully discovered in the wireless community networks aimed at regular consumers. This aim of this paper is to describe how eduroam™ architecture and technologies can be utilised in building these kinds of wireless community networks and to present the experiences gathered in building the Wireless Tampere community network.Design/methodology/approachThe eduroam™ architecture and technologies were chosen as the basis of Wireless Tampere community network architecture because of their scalability and security. Deploying eduroam™ technologies and architecture to a wider user base both confirmed old and revealed new issues and solutions in improving the usability and the deployment effort of eduroam™ and similar technologies.FindingsThe eduroam™ technology and architecture can be utilised to build wireless community networks, but additional effort must be allocated in improving the usability and the ease of deployment when consumers, company and other regular users are involved. The improvements achieved would not have been developed if the concept and architecture had not been exposed to consumer and company users. The development of both the eduroam™ and Wireless Tampere concept requires deploying them to a wider audience and improving them iteratively utilising the existing solutions as the basis for new improvements.Originality/valueThe paper presents the issues and problems, which were confronted when applying eduroam™ technologies in building the Wireless Tampere community network. The solutions found and deployment experiences presented can be utilised in improving eduroam™ as well as a basis for developing new, open and inter‐connected wireless community networks.