Previously Published JANET Roaming News

On this page:

• New Joiners - the University of Glamorgan and The Natural History Museum (May 2011)
• The University of the West of Scotland now has an operational service (May 2011)
• eduroam at Networkshop 39 Report (May 2011)
• The course you've been waiting for - Implementing eduroam at your organisation (May 2011)
• AQL, City of London University, Cranfield University and the University of Bedfordshire
• The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and Scottish Crop Research Institute have merged (April 2011)
• University of Surrey and the National Science Learning Centre now offer operational eduroam services (April 2011)
• Two new members: Dumfries and Galloway College and Forth Valley College (March 2011)
• New Training Course - 'Implementing eduroam' (March 2011)
• eduroam use at a new all time high (March 2011)
• New documents published of interest to eduroam system admins/support staff and IT Services managers (March 2011)
• Normal service resumed on the JRS infrastructure 14th March
• Operational eduroam services now at Leicester and Lincoln (March 2011)
• The Moredun Research Institute has become the 90th organisation in the UK to offer an operational eduroam service (Feb 2011)
• London Metropolitan University and Northumbria University are now offering an operational services (Feb 2011)
• New eduroam joiners; University of Brighton (Feb 2011)
• Majority of HE adopting eduroam (Jan 2011)
• Teesside University now WPA2/AES only (Jan 2011)
• New eduroam joiners; DeMontfort University, Keele University and MidKent College (Jan 2011)
• New eduroam joiner; Thames Valley University (Dec 2011)
• Next JANET Roaming (eduroam) Fundamentals course on 11th January 2011, Bristol (Nov 2010)
• Three new joiners in November; Anglia Ruskin University, Carmel College and St Helen's College
• Home service now available at The University of Manchester and at Kings College London (Nov 2010)
• JANET Advisory: MS IAS and NPS Operator-Name RADIUS attribute issue (Nov 2010)
• New Documentation - PID moving to a single service SSID: eduroam (Nov 2010)
• The Open University asserts operational home service (Oct 2010)
• Growth in WPA2/AES-only eduroam networks (Oct 2010)
• eduroam Conference SP Service success (Oct 2010)
• Call for eduroam mentors (Oct 2010)
• JANET's National RADIUS Proxy Servers have now been updated to Radiator 4.7 (Oct 2010)
• University of the West of Scotland has joined eduroam (Sept 2010)
• Univ of Strathclyde now has a live eduroam service (Sept 2010)
• JANET welcomes Scottish Agricultural College (Sept 2010)
• Updated Version of SU1X Windows Config Deployment Tool Released (Sept 2010)
• Wi-Fi Alliance plan to withdraw WPA/TKIP from new products - JRS Tier 2 WPA requirement relaxed (Sept 2010)
• Canterbury College announces operational eduroam services (Sept 2010)
• The Moredun Research Institute in Penicuik, Scotland has joined eduroam (Aug 2010)
• There is now an operational eduroam service at University of Hull, Scarborough Campus (Aug 2010)
• The University of London has an operational Home and Visited eduroam service (Aug 2010)
• OpenSEA announces the latest development release of XSupplicant 2.2.1 (Aug 2010)
• Ravensbourne joins eduroam (Aug 2010)
• University of Hull announces operational visited service (Aug 2010)
• University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and University of Leicester join eduroam (Aug 2010)
• Birmingham City University and University of Surrey join eduroam (July 2010)
• University of East Anglia announces full operational eduroam service (July 2010)
• Advisory - broadcast of eduroam SSID at non-operational sites (July 2010)
• New promotional material available (July 2010)
• The UK Sites Map UK web page has been updated to include a colour-coded table of the type of service being offered at participanting organisations (June 2010)
• New release of the SU1X Windows 802.1X configuration deployment tool (June 2010)
• Operational eduroam services inaugerated at: University of Gloucestershire, Scottish Crop Research Institue, Bangor University and Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland
• New joiner: Aston University (June 2010)
• NRPS performance improvements introduced; logic-based anti-auth-loop system (May 2010)
• New joiners: University of Gloucestershire (May 2010)
• Carmarthenshire College announces operational Home (IdP) service (May 2010)
• Northumbria University joins JRS (April 2010)
• Full JRS/eduroam service available at University of East London (March 2010)
• Usage of eduroam in the UK reaches a new peak (March 2010)
• NAGIOS 'Looking Glass' feature available for JRS Administrators on JRS Support March 2010)
• Operational JRS3/eduroam service available at Liverpool John Moores University (March 2010)
• New zoomable JANET Roaming eduroam sites locations map launched (March 2010)
• Follow JANET Roaming on twitter (March 2010)
• Operational JRS2/eduroam service now available at Kingston University (March 2010)
• March joiners: Canterbury College and the Scottish Crop Research Institute (March 2010)
• New joiners: Richard Huish College, the University of London and the Robert Gordon University (Feb 2010)
• FreeRADIUS 2.1.8 released (30/12/2009)
• Xsupplicant 2.2.0 stable release for XP and Linux announced (29/01/2010)
• Full eduroam service available at Leeds Metropolitan University (February 2010)
• Full eduroam service available at University of Abertay (January 2010)
• Filtering RADIUS Attributes with Microsoft IAS/NPS published (December 2009)
• Full eduroam service available at Brunel, Cambridge and Warwick (November 2009)
• Usage at an all time high (November 2009)
• JANET Roaming Fundamentals course took place on 1st December
• Advisory FreeRADIUS 2.1.7 (Oct 2009)
• New Features on JRS Support Server (Oct 2009)
• Publication of 'JRS Benefits - a toolkit for making the business case' (Oct 2009)
• Use of JANET Roaming picked up after summer break (Oct 2009)
• New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.9 XP/Linux (Oct 2009)
• JANET Roaming Fundamentals course took place on 2nd Oct
• JANET Roaming / RADIUS / 802.1X UCISA-NG Survey Underway (Sept 2009)
• Use of JANET Roaming remained strong over the summer vacation period (Sept 2009)
• Security Vulnerability in FreeRADIUS 1.1.3 - 1.1.7 (Sept 2009)
• First JANET Roaming course held (August 2009)
• New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.8 XP/Linux (August 2009)
• JANET Roaming course trial (July 2009)
• Eduroam connects Serbia and Macedonia (June 2009)
• JRS Support database now supporting multiple sites per organisation (June 2009)
• OpenSEA supplicant accepted into WiFi Alliance testbed (June 2009)
• Online supplicant configuration training (June 2009)
• Smooth withdrawal of JRS1 service tier (June 2009)
• Technology/FAQ section revamped (May 2009)
• New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.7 announced (May 2009)
• Announcement of withdrawal of JRS1 web redirect service tier (May 2009)
• Publication of update to the JRS Technical Specification (May 2009)
• Dramatic growth in usage of JANET Roaming (March 2009)
• JRS location maps have been upgraded (Feb 2009)
• IPv6 on the NRPS and JRS Support servers (Feb 2009)
• New index and entries in the Technology/FAQs section (Jan 2009)
• New simultated visitor test on JRS Support Server (Nov 2008)

 

September News

eduroam Consultancy in strong demand - Over the summer the eduroam consultancy service has been in great demand. This is a chargeable service provided through JANET Roaming that can be utilised for on-site problem solving, post-deployment auditing and Q.A. work, eduroam installation and setup or on-site training. This is very useful in situations where an organisation‘s IT Support staff simply do not have the time or expert knowledge to effectively and efficiently carry out the work, or where perhaps the staff who originally set up the eduroam service have left the institution or changed job roles.

The service works as follows: the scope of the work and number of days required are agreed and a simple purchase order mechanism is used to purchase the service. Mutually convenient days for the work are agreed, usually preceded by remote analysis of existing configuration and a written report of findings, recommendations and work carried out is usually requested to conclude the job.

One project undertaken in July was for the University of Oxford. The University already had a working eduroam service that had been extensive deployed throughout the University departments, local hospitals and local authority locations in and around Oxford. However the Oxford University Computing Service wanted assurance that the deployment met all requirements of the eduroam Technical Specification and conformed to best current practice particularly with regard to the efficiency and effectiveness of their RADIUS server configuration.

The full story, which makes an excellent read, is available on the OUCS Network Team blog: http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/networks/2011/09/01/maintenance-work-on-eduroam/

More information on eduroam Consultancy is available at: www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/enquiries.html#eduroam_consultancy

August News

JANET Advisory: Injection of Operator-Name Attribute - JANET strongly recommends wherever possible the implementation of injection of the Operator-Name RADIUS attribute into Access-Request packets forwarded to the JANET National RADIUS Proxy servers by all RADIUS servers at organisations offering Visited eduroam services. This is applicable to ALL participants operating Visited eduroam services based on FreeRADIUS and Radiator platforms. Op-Name injection cannot be implemented on other platforms as yet. The configuration changes necessary to implement this are minimal and easily within the capabilities of JRS Tech Administrators of all abilities. The benefits to the whole community are significant and so implementation is strongly recommended as soon as possible.

Updated version of SU1X Windows 802.1X config depolyment tool released - an updated version of Gareth Ayres’ SU1X tool has just been released. It includes some interesting new features to help users having connection problems and problem notification functions.

Gareth has also put up on the SU1X web site a Mac OS X Lion config generator, (completely separate from the SU1X tool), to help network administrators deploy 802.1X settings to Mac devices. There is also documentation of unhelpful behaviour of the Mac OS X Lion OS when connecting to an open captive portal network and a useful work around.

For full text of this announcement see: SU1X and Mac OS X Lion News Announcement

Operational eduroam service now available at Aston University and University of Glamorgan - congratulations both Aston University and University of Glamorgan which are now offering Home and Visited services and are both injecting operator-name - which benefits roaming users by helping with troubleshooting if needed.

New Joiners, August - a warm welcome to University of the Arts London and University of the West of England. We look forward to them providing an eduroam service in due course.

July News

Reading University eduroam service summer upgrade - IPv6 is now available throughout the eduroam network at University of Reading.

Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, Forth Valley College of Further and Higher Education and Ravensbourne all now have operational eduroam services. - this brings the total of operational participating organisations to 100.

New eduroam implementation troubleshooting guide published for JRS system administrators - troubleshooting flowchart to help JRS Administrators solve eduroam implementation problems. This is not a step-by-step guide to the whole implementation process, instead it aims to point system administrators trying to implement eduroam towards common RADIUS-centric issues and to help the administator in troubleshooting their eduroam infrastructure to resolve difficulties. It joins the previously published user connection troubleshooting flowchart for IT Support staff in the Tech Guides section on: www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/documentation.html#technical_guides

The University of Winchester has joined - a warm welcome to Winchester, which is our 145th participating organisation. We look forward to them providing an eduroam service in due course.

June News

Glasgow Caledonian University working towards eduroam service - GCU has now joined JRS and with the wireless network already supporting 802.1X will shortly be offering eduroam.

JANET Advisory: Measures to Improve the Stability of eduroam in the UK - eduroam is becoming increasing important to the community and following recent incidents that have affected the national service, JANET is making enhancements to the national proxy servers which will benefit organisations with well set up eduroam deployments. The enhancements have two components; an improvement to the performance of the servers (multi-threading) and new logic that will automatically send rejects to roaming users belonging to organisations whose ORPS become unavailable or go offline. This advisory includes a reminder of the suspension of service policy rule that will be enforced in cases of extreme service disruption.

A number of important recommendations are also emphasized including; a review the guidance material published on this site that can help ensure your eduroam implementation conforms to the JRS Technical Specification and best practice; carrying out the documented Q.A. testing; consideration of the resilience of your ORPS/implementation of a dual ORPS system; and employment of own-service operation monitoring systems.

Keele University now has an operational service - a Home and Visited service is now available at Keele for the benefit of staff, students, researchers and visitors.

New Joiners for May 2011 - the University of Glamorgan and The Natural History Museum have now joined, bringing the total of registered participants to 143.

The University of the West of Scotland now has an operational service (May 2011) - a Home and Visited service is now available at the many sites in and around Ayr, Dumfries, Hamilton and Paisley for the benefit of staff, students, researchers and visitors. This increases the number of operational participants in the UK to 96.

eduroam at Networkshop 39 Report (May 2011) - eduroam was a great success at this year’s Networkshop, with widespread coverage and a large number of delegates making use of the service. New technology was employed for the authentication uplink to the JANET RADIUS proxy servers - RadSec, which will eventually be available to all eduroam organisations. For details see: www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/networkshop39-eduroam-report.html

The course you've been waiting for - Implementing eduroam at your organisation (May 2011) Venue: Tavistock Square London. Date: 20th July. Duration: 1 day. Presenter: Dr Alan Buxey. More details and booking: www.ja.net/services/training/courses/implementingeduroam.html

New Joiners for April - our JANET 3G partners AQL, City of London University, Cranfield University and the University of Bedfordshire have all joined during April. This takes us to 141 registered participants.

The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute and Scottish Crop Research Institute have merged (April 2011) - the name of the combined organisation is the James Hutton Institute. System admins should expect to see users from hutton.ac.uk in their logs. Macaulay was non-operational so the number of operational members remains at 95 whilst the registered organisations total reduces to 137.

Two more organisations now offer operational eduroam services (April 2011) - the University of Surrey and the National Science Learning Centre, both now offer Home and Visited services for the benefit of staff, students, researchers and visitors. That takes us to 95 operational participants in the UK.

Two new members: Dumfries and Galloway College and Forth Valley College (March 2011) - we welcome our new members from the Further Education community. This takes us to 138 registered participants in the UK.

New Training Course - 'Implementing eduroam' (March 2011) - FREE launch pilot course, 31st March 2011 at Woburn House, London. There are a limited number of places remaining, first come, first served! Course NOW FULL. This course provides participants with hands on experience of how eduroam operates at both a basic technical level, but also at a support level. Hands on experience is provided showing how a RADIUS server can be configured for eduroam (both for home and for visited usage), examination of the RADIUS proxy traffic and changing the contents of proxied messages. A full course overview is available at: www.ja.net/services/training/courses/implementingeduroam.html

eduroam use at a new all time high (March 2011) - usage of eduroam for inter-organisation roaming reached a new high with nearly 50,000 user devices authenticating over the national infrastructure during February.

New documents published of interest to eduroam system admins/support staff and IT Services managers (March 2011) - www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/documentation.html#casestudies will take you to the case studies area where there's an implementing a single primary SSID study from Swansea and one from Bristol detailing the reasons for choosing XpressConnect and its implementation for rolling out Windows native supplicant config complete with certificate settings.

There's a systems trouble shooting flowchart for supporting users having difficulty getting eduroam to work (ie this is not a guide to configuring every supplicant there is!). This can be found towards the bottom of the Tech Guides section: www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/documentation.html#technical_guides

Normal service resumed on the JRS infrastructure 14th March - ORPS at problem eduroam sites are now back online and the additional issues concerning username and auth-loops have been addressed.

Performance issues UK eduroam 9th-10th March - regular eduroam users may have experienced problems in utilising the service during the afternoons of 9th and 10th March. The JRS infrastructure has been fully operational during these periods, but has been under stress due to a number of eduroam site related issues. The major issue has been the unavailability of several ORPS at operational sites which has caused the backing up of authentication requests on the NRPS, tying up a huge amount of processing resource. Also the NRPSs have been hit by a large amount of bad authentication attempts - malformed realm components of username that the participants' ORPS should not have been sending to the national infrastructure. In addition a number sites have been sending authentication loop initiating requests which have the potential to consume huge amounts of bandwidth and processing time - were it not for the auth-loops detection and termination capability of the NRPSs. These three factors have resulted in a huge amount of processing resource on the NRPSs being tied up, with a consequent loss of service for a large number of users at responsible sites.

The chart below shows the effect of these issues on the authentication success rate and usage of the service, as measured at the NRPSs. We are taking up these issues with the participating organisations concerned and trust that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Operational eduroam services now at Leicester and Lincoln (March 2011) - March got off to a good start; the University of Leicester and the University of Lincoln offer Home and Visited services, bringing the total of operational organisations in the UK to 93.

The Moredun Research Institute has become the 91st organisation in the UK to offer an operational eduroam service (Feb 2011) - this is now a Visited and Home type service, so visitors to Moredun can use eduroam and Moredun's own staff and researchers can use the service at the many eduroam-enabled sites across Scotland, the rest of the UK and worldwide.

London Metropolitan University and Northumbria University are now offering an operational services (Feb 2011) - the universities now provide both Home and Visited services, enabling their staff, students and visitors to benefit from the service.

New eduroam joiners; University of Brighton (Feb 2011) - has joined the service, bringing total membership to 136.

Majority of HE adopting eduroam (Jan 2011) - the 100 HE membership target has been reached. eduroam is now available at most of the major HE institutions in the UK and is rapidly becoming a service that visitors and users are coming to expect rather than being viewing as a treat.

Teesside University now WPA2/AES only (Jan 2011) - congratulations to Teesside, the eduroam network is now WPA2/AES only, so if visiting make sure your mobile/laptop device is set for WPA2/AES if it set to the now-deprecated WPA/TKIP.

New eduroam joiners (Jan 2011) - DeMontfort University, Keele University and MidKent College have joined the service so far this month, bringing total membership to 135. JANET's CSIRT now has an operational Home service, bringing the total number of operational participants to 88.

The University of Dundee and the University of Bath have asserted operational services (Dec 2010) - there is now both Home and Visited services at the universities. Also, Kings College London has become an identity provider, so students and staff can now benefit when visiting other eduroam sites.

New eduroam joiner; Thames Valley University (Dec 2010) - the Thames Valley University, which has sites in Ealing, Reading, Slough and Brentford is warmly welcomed to the federation. JANET's CSIRT has also become an independent participant in the service. Total membership is now 132.

Next JANET Roaming (eduroam) Fundamentals course 11th Jan 2011, Bristol (Nov 2011) - For further details see: www.ja.net/services/training/courses/roamingfundamentals

Three new joiners in November - Anglia Ruskin University, Carmel College and St Helen's College all joined JANET Roaming in November, bringing the total membership to 130.

Home service now available at The University of Manchester and at Kings College London (Nov 2010) - Manchester and Kings have for a long time offered eduroam to their visitors. Now staff and students at these institutions can also benefit from the eduroam service when visiting other eduroam sites.

JANET Advisory: MS IAS and NPS Operator-Name RADIUS attribute issue (Nov 2010) - notification of critical issue affecting participants that have implemented Microsoft IAS and NPS ORPS - urgent action required.

New Documentation - PID moving to a single service SSID: eduroam (Nov 2010) - a new section has been set up on the Documentation page which will feature initiatives designed to help develop your eduroam implementations. Ths first document is a template project initiation document for use in kicking off a project to streamline your wireless network to a single main service SSID.

The Open University asserts operational home service (Oct 2010) - staff and students can now benefit from the service when visiting other eduroam sites. There are now 85 participants offering operational services in the UK.

Growth in WPA2/AES-only eduroam networks (Oct 2010) - following September's announcement of changes to the wireless cipher requirements for eduroam in the UK, Nottingham Trent University and Loughborough University are leading the way in only offering WPA2/AES on their eduroam networks. This trend is encouraged.

eduroam Conference SP Service success (Oct 2010) - thanks to Southampton's SOWN system, an eduroam service is currently being provided at the JISC Future of Reserach conference. This 'eduroam in a box' system comprises just the one AP providing the eduroam wireless service, tunnelled back to the Southampton SOWN backend. The SOWN ORPS proxy, peered to the NRPS, handles authentications. This must count as the fastest joining of JRS to launch of operational service in history. Many thanks to all involved. Wireless coverage is good - it extends at least throughout the exhibitors floor from the JANET stand.

Call for eduroam mentors (Oct 2010) - eduroam in the UK is going from strength to strength, however we still need to encourage further adoption and implementation of opertational services. We are calling for IT specialists with RADIUS experience to volunteer to act as technical buddies to colleagues from the community who would benefit from more informal guidance and support than that available though the JRS Technical Support service. For further details and info on the expenses payment offer, please see call for eduroam mentors.

JANET's National RADIUS Proxy Servers have now been updated to Radiator 4.7 (Oct 2010) - following the problem-free preliminary upgrade of roaming0, the latest version of Radiator has been installed on roaming1 and roaming2. This completes the upgrade to Radiator 4.7 - which was released in August 2010. We recommend that all ORPS at eduroam sites running Radiator are also upgraded.

University of the West of Scotland has joined eduroam (Sept 2010) - we welcome the University and hope it will soon be offering eduroam. The total number of participating organisations is now 126.

Univ of Strathclyde now has a live eduroam service (Sept 2010) - roaming home users and visitors to John Anderson campus can now benefit from eduroam. This brings the total of organisations offering eduroam in the UK to 83.

JANET welcomes Scottish Agricultural College (Sept 2010) - the latest organisation to join eduroam. There are now 125 participating organisations in UK.

Updated Version of SU1X Windows Config Deployment Tool Released (Sept 2010) - an updated version of the SU1X tool has been released. The update comprises mainly bug fixes, but also adds a few additional features (notably code to turn on NAP/SoH) and improves operation with Vista and Windows 7. See SU1X for more details.

Wi-Fi Alliance plan to withdraw WPA/TKIP from new products - JRS Tier 2 WPA requirement relaxed (Sept 2010) - the Wi-Fi Alliance has endorsed a phased plan, commencing January 2011, for the removal of WEP and WPA/TKIP support from products manufactured by its members. The requirement for eduroam participants offering Tier 2 service level to offer WPA/TKIP has been relaxed to permit eduroam networks to support only WPA2. JRS Tier 2 participants may still offer WPA on eduroam, but they should now offer WPA2. For full details please see JANET Advisory: WPA/TKIP Obsolescence and Change to JRS Tier 2 Requirements

Canterbury College announces operational eduroam services (Sept 2010) - the college now offers a Home and Visited service, so both staff and students, and visitors to the college can benefit from eduroam.

The Moredun Research Institute in Penicuik, Scotland has joined eduroam (Aug 2010) - we welcome the Institute and hope it will soon be offering eduroam. The total number of participating organisations is now 124.

There is now an operational eduroam service at University of Hull, Scarborough Campus (Aug 2010) This means there are now 81 organisations providing live services in the UK.

The University of London has an operational Home and Visited eduroam service (Aug 2010) - staff and students at the University can now benefit from eduroam when visiting other eduroam sites and visitors to Univ of London can connect via the eduroam service.

OpenSEA announces the latest development release of XSupplicant 2.2.1 (Aug 2010) - there are a lot of new features and enhancements in this version, released today 17/08/10. Among the the more interesting enhancments are the inclusion of support for Windows Vista and 7 (x86 for now, an x64 version will be out soon). This also includes support for IETF's Network Endpoint Assessment (NEA) standard. The purpose of this development release is to get feedback on bugs so that OpenSEA can work toward a new stable release with all of the new features. So please be sure to file bugs on sourceforge.net if you find any. http://open1x.sourceforge.net The stable release v 2.2.0 for Windows XP and linux is also available at this site.

Ravensbourne joins eduroam (Aug 2010) - another new joiner; welcome to Ravensbourne. The total number of registered organisations is now 123.

University of Hull announces operational visited service (Aug 2010) - Hull joins the growing list of organisations offering visited eduroam services in the UK. Visitors to and staff/students at the university can now make use of eduroam.

University of Wales Institute, Cardiff and University of Leicester join eduroam (Aug 2010) - we are pleased to welcome these two universities to eduroam. The total number of registered organisations is now 122.

Birmingham City University and University of Surrey join eduroam (July 2010) - we are pleased to welcome these two universities to eduroam. The total number of registered organisations is now 120.

University of East Anglia announces full operational eduroam service (July 2010) - visitors to and staff/students at the university can now make use of eduroam. There are now 78 organisations in the UK offering operational eduroam services.

Advisory - broadcast of eduroam SSID at non-operational sites (July 2010) - with the aim of eliminating the dissatisfaction of users who see an eduroam SSID at sites where eduroam is in the process of being implemented, but where an operational service is not yet working, the widespread broadcast of 'eduroam' will be restricted; with effect from January. Full details of announcement.

New promotional material available (July 2010) - the promo material web page has been substantially updated and now includes an amusing animated video explaining what eduroam is to new users. This should be popular with Freshers this Autumn. You'll also find a range of ideas for promoting eduroam to your users throughout the campus; drinks coaster, stickers, help cards and more.

New eduroam sites 'type of service offered' table now complete (June 2010) - the UK Sites Map UK web page has been updated to include a table of the type of service being offered at participants in the UK. Users are now able to see at a glance whether an organisation offers an operational 'Home and Visited' service or is working towards a service or has Home/Visited only status. All service types are appropriately colour coded. This removes the confusion that an operational service is available at a site simply because it is listed as participating in the JRS.

New release of the SU1X Windows 802.1X configuration deployment tool (June 2010) - a number of new features have been added to the SU1X software making it even more valuable to JRS administrators. The new features include support for certificate installation and complete automation of PEAP configuration requiring zero user intervention. Also included is SSID removal and priority setting together with WPA2 compatibility check with fallback to WPA. Full details

A number of new operational eduroam services now available (June 2010) - staff and students at University of Gloucestershire and visitors to the Park campus can now use the service where available. Visitors to and staff/students at the Scottish Crop Research Insitute also can now make use of eduroam. This further extends the impressively wide availability of eduroam in the major population centres throughout Scotland. Bangor University has announcesd a Visited service hot on the heels of announcing a Home service for their own staff and students. The wireless network includes 270 access points, allowing extensive coverage at the campus. Finally, Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland has announced a Home service - students and staff at BioSS can now roam to other eduroam sites and gain authenticated access to eduroam networks. There are now 77 organisations in the UK offering operational seduroam services.

Aston University joins JRS (June 2010) - we are pleased to welcome the Aston University to JRS. The total number of registered organisations is now 118.

NRPS Performance Improvement (May 2010) - the National RADIUS proxy servers (NRPS) realm handling logic were updated to eliminate authentication loops which had previously triggered the NRPS protection traffic limiter.

Authentication loops could previously have arisen when an organisation's RADIUS server (ORPS) incorrectly sent an access-request to the NRPS for a user who belonged to the ORPS's own realm. The ORPS should have handled such a request itself rather than having passed it up to the NRPS. The consequence of this was that NRPS would correctly return the request back to the organisation's RADIUS server, which then sent it back again to the NRPS so perpetuating an authentication loop.

Such loops were very dangerous for the whole JRS infrastructure, which is why traffic rate limiting drop/block logic was originally implemented.

Now the NRPS will reject access-requests if they come from an ORPS which should handle the request itself. This means that the drop/block traffic limiter, which had led to problems in certain situations (eg. large conference events) can be removed. It also means that at sites that have incorrectly configured RADIUS servers, users who enter non-standard format usernames (eg. use upper-case characters) will find that their authentication attempts will fail. Organisations should therefore ensure that their ORPS are correctly configured - and can pass the JRS Q.A. Test.

Networkshop 38 Report (April 2010) - in general terms Networkshop 38 was a great success for eduroam. The service was available over the 802.11n wireless network throughout the main conference venue and was successfully used by a large number of delegates. Unfortunately however, despite pre-conference testing, there were some people who experienced difficulties and the service periodically became unavailable for short periods. These problems only became apparent at the venue under the high-load conditions experienced during the conference; during previous smaller events at Manchester, the eduroam service had performed perfectly.

The good news is that following an investigation into the causes of the difficulties by Technical Support in conjunction with the conference IT facility organisers at Manchester, a number of beneficial measures have been introduced. For full report follow link: http://www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/networkshop38-report.html

University of Gloucestershire joins JRS (May 2010) - we are pleased to welcome the University of Gloucestershire to JRS. The total number of registered organisations is now 117.

Carmarthenshire College's eduroam service has become operational (May 2010) - the college announced that they offered a Home (IdP) service for their staff and students. This brought the total of organisations offering an operational eduroam service in the UK to 73.

Northumbria University joins JRS (April 2010) - Northumbria University joined JRS. The total number of registered organisations became 116.

Full JRS/eduroam service available at University of East London (March 2010) - UEL, located in Docklands and Stratford, became the 72nd UK organisation to assert a full JRS/eduroam service. We welcome the addition of UEL to the family of eduroam sites in the capital.

Usage of eduroam in the UK reaches a new peak (March 2010) - The inter-site authentications count of unique devices roaming between organisations, using the national JRS infrastructure, reached a new high of 21,072 during March. We are pleased to be of service to the community!

NAGIOS 'Looking Glass' feature available for JRS Administrators (March 2010) - JRS Administrators can now have sight of the NAGIOS monitor process that constantly checks connectivity and authentication service availability on organisational RADIUS proxy servers. Details have been e-mailed to organisation contacts.

It's hard to keep up with the development in JRS this month (March 2010) - Full JRS/eduroam service is now available at Liverpool John Moores University - JRS3 service, ie IPv6 available and no-NAT. University of York, Dept of Computer Science also now has an operational service - including wired connections. Total number of operational participants is now 71.

New JANET Roaming eduroam sites locations map now launched (March 2010) - Just in case you haven't noticed, we have a new Google maps based JRS map of UK eduroam sites. Jolly handy if you are in Regent's Park and wonder where you're picking up 'eduroam' from and want to check whether to use WPA/TKIP or WPA2/AES. Press release.

JANET Roaming News can now be followed on twitter (March 2010) - Just search for 'eduroamUK'.

Full JRS/eduroam service now available at Kingston University (March 2010) - Kingston University, located in Kingston upon Thames London, has become the 69th UK organisation to assert a full JRS/eduroam service. We welcome the addition of Kingston to the list of eduroam sites in the capital.

New organisations joining JRS (March 2010) - we are pleased to welcome Canterbury College and the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Invergowrie to JRS. This brings the total of registered organisations to 115.

New organisations joining JRS (Feb 2010) - we were pleased to welcome Richard Huish College, the University of London and the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to JRS. This brought the total of registered organisations to 113.

FreeRADIUS 2.1.8 released (30/12/2009). The focus of the latest release is stability and 2.1.8 fixes a number of issues with 2.1.7 - notably problems associated with load balancing of RADIUS traffic across the three JRS NRPS when the ORPS was running 2.1.7 (and previous 2.1.x versions) and authenticating with a site also using FreeRADIUS 2.1.x. Following extensive testing we can report that client-balance and client-port-balance now work happily. FreeRADIUS is available from: http://freeradius.org/download.html

Xsupplicant 2.2.0 stable release for XP and Linux announced (29/01/2010). OpenSea's Xsupplicant can now be recommended for general use with XP. Following extensive testing and bug ironing this release is stable and is available for Windows XP, and Linux (both x86 and x64, with source available for building on other platforms). There is an aggressive project timeline in place for completing the port to Vista. It is planned for this to be released in April. Xsupplicant 2.2.0 for XP and Linux is available on the sourceforge web site: http://open1x.sourceforge.net/

Full JRS/eduroam service now available at Leeds Metropolitan University (February 2010): - the Leeds Metro has become the 68th UK organisation to assert a full JRS/eduroam service. We welcome the addition of Leeds Metropolitan to the growing list of eduroam hot-zones.

The next JANET Roaming Fundamentals course - 4th March Glasgow (January 2010): - will be held at the Teacher Building. For details follow link: http://www.ja.net/services/training/courses/roamingfundamentals.html
This will be followed by a course at The Studio, Birmingham on 17th March.

Full JRS/eduroam service now available at University of Abertay (January 2010): - the University of Abertay has become the 67th UK organisation to assert a full JRS/eduroam service. We welcome the addition of Abertay. Happy New Year roaming!

Just published (December 2009): - Filtering RADIUS Attributes with Microsoft IAS and NPS

This document gives a general introduction to RADIUS attribute usage in relation to VLAN assignment, the problems that can arise when users visit non-home sites when attribute filtering is not in place, the specific difficulties presented by Microsoft's approach to attribute handling in IAS and NPS and how to effectively implement attribute filtering with MS IAS/NPS.

Full JRS eduroam service available at new sites (November 2009): - the universities of Brunel, Cambridge and Warwick are the latest JRS-participant organisations to assert full compliance with the JRS Technical Specification and these institutions now offer full Home and Visited services. We welcome the addition of these new locations. Happy roaming!

Usage at an all time high (November 2009): - during October use of JRS in terms of both access-accept traffic handled and unique devices autheticating via the service reached the highest level ever. There were over 16,000 unique devices, broadly equivalent to users, which connected to an eduroam network using the national RADIUS system during the month. This excludes the users that authenticated using eduroam at their home sites.

JANET Roaming Fundamentals course held on 1st December in Bristol For details follow link: http://www.ja.net/services/training/courses/roamingfundamentals.html

Advisory FreeRADIUS 2.1.7 (October 2009): The current latest version of FreeRADIUS is 2.1.7. We are currently investigating an issue associated with FreeRADIUS load balancing of RADIUS traffic proxied to the three JRS NRPS. For organisations using 2.1.7 (and previous 2.1.x versions) a problem arises when an authentication exchange takes place with a site also using FreeRADIUS 2.1.x. Until a resolution is identified, the current advice is to not use client-balance load sharing and instead to use failover, ie within proxy.conf in the home server_pool clause, set type = failover. This issue should be addressed in the forthcoming release of 2.1.8.

New JRS joiners (October 2009): we were pleased to welcome Darlington College to JRS. This increased the total number of UK participating organisations to 110.

New Features on JRS Support Server (October 2009): JRS Administrators will be interested two new JRS Support Server features. ORPS can now be designated as having specific roles; Authentication and Accounting, Authentication only, Accounting only, RADIUS client only. ORPS can also be designated test/development units to which only RADIUS traffic with the home realm being prefixed with 'test' will be sent. For more details see: ORPS-role-designation-features-JRS-Supprt-Server

Just published (October 2009): JRS Benefits - a toolkit for making the business case

This document provides JANET-connected organisations with the information and tools to assess and develop their own business case for the implementation of JANET Roaming. Organisations will be able to use this material, with suitable adjustments to suit individual circumstances, to build and develop their own business cases for the implementation of JANET Roaming. We encourage interested organisations to cut and paste the relevant sections to suit their particular business case.

Also - Executive Summary - the JRS Service in a nutshell - a concise double-sided one page summary that can be used by IT staff to inform senior management about JANET Roaming eduroam. This document states what the service does, includes a detailed schematic and lists the key benefits are and how these map on to typical institutional high-level strategic objectives.

Use of JANET Roaming picked up after summer break (October 2009):

New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.9 XP/Linux (October 2009): There is a new release of Xsupplicant (released 11/09/09) available for evaluation on the sourceforge web site: http://open1x.sourceforge.net/

JANET Roaming Fundamentals course took place on 2nd October at Woburn House London. For details follow link: http://www.ja.net/services/training/courses/roamingfundamentals.html

JANET Roaming / RADIUS / 802.1X UCISA-NG Survey Underway (September 2009): A short online technical survey being run by UCISA-NG is currently underway, closing date 12th October. One senior technical contact per JANET connected organisation has been invited by e-mail to take part. The results should prove most interesting and provide a useful snapshot of the deployment of RADIUS and 802.1X together with technical opinions regarding JRS in the community at present. The survey is totally anonymous and no personal details are requested or retained. If you would like to raise or be contacted to discuss a particular issue, please open an enquiry with JANET Service Desk.

New JRS joiners (September 2009): we were pleased to welcome Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln and The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. This increased the total number of UK participating organisations to 109.

Use of JANET Roaming remained strong over the summer vacation period (Sept 2009):

Security Vulnerability in FreeRADIUS 1.1.3 - 1.1.7 (September 2009): Announced 9/09/09, versions 1.1.3 - 1.1.7 are vulnerable to being crashed by an attacker sending a specially crafted Access-Request packet. This issue has been corrected in release 1.1.8, however we recommend upgrading to version 2.x.x.

JANET Roaming Fundamentals course trial held on 25th August. This new course was fully subscribed and was held in London

New JRS joiners (August 2009): we were pleased to welcome the University of Bolton, Durham University, University of Sunderland, The Macaulay Institute and Edge Hill University. This increased the total number of UK participating organisations to 107.

New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.8 XP/Linux (August 2009): OpenSEA announced the release of 2.1.8 development version (10/07/09). This version has all of the features that will be in the 2.2.0 stable release. Since no new features will be added, all future code for this release will be bug fixes. With this release comes an installer for x86 based Linux.  At the moment, the installer has only been tested on Ubuntu, however it should work on other Linux distros as well. To use the installer, you will need to assign executable rights to the installer file you downloaded, and run it as root. The next release, due shortly, will support building on x64.

Trial of JANET Roaming Fundamentals course trial held on 15th July. This trial run of the new course was fully subscribed and was held at Peter House in Manchester http://www.ja.net/services/training/venues/manchester.html.

The course provided delegates with an understanding of how JANET Roaming operates at both basic technical and support level. It included an overview of how to configure user equipment and solve some of the issues those users might face. The course also covered the configuration of wireless and wired clients for use on the JANET Roaming Service (eduroam), logfile examination and methods of fault finding and reporting.

New JRS joiner this month (June 2009): we were pleased to welcome Leeds Metropolitan University. This increased the total number of UK participating organisations to 102.

In last few weeks eduroam has connected two new European NRENs - AMRES (Serbia) and MARNET (Macedonia) (June 2009). The European confederation now has 36 connected countries. So if you are planning a visit to either of these countries, check out the eduroam web site for links to the institutions within those countries that are eduroam-enabled!

JRS Support database now supports multiple individual sites for each participating organisation (June 2009). JRS administrators are now able to advertise far more granula information about their service offering including wireless cipher information for each site.

OpenSEA 802.1X Supplicant accepted into Wi-Fi Alliance testbed (June 2009): we were pleased to announce that the OpenSEA 802.1x supplicant had been accepted into the Wi-Fi Alliance's Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) testbed. This was an important milestone in the development of open security standards for wireless networking and continues the momentum towards OpenSEA’s goal of promoting the development and distribution of an open source 802.1x supplicant. To read the full article, please go to:
www.ja.net/company/news-2009/wifialliance.html

Online supplicant configuration training (June 2009): GEANT2 has produced online training in how to configure the following supplicants; built-in Windows XP, Intel, SecureW2. Supplicant configuration made easy - see: http://cbt.geant2.net/repository/eduroam_supplicants/setting_up_eduroam_supplicants.html

Smooth introduction of withdrawal of the JRS1 service tier (June 2009): the withdrawal of JRS1 (supporting web redirect based authentication) came into effect on 1st May without any reported issues from the community. This has allowed the JRS service to become fully eduroam-compliant.

Technology/FAQ section revamped (May 2009): the Technology/FAQs section of this web site has been given a makeover with the questions and answers grouped into three categories based on the main interest groups; end-users, JRS site technical administrators and general information/business management.

New release of Xsupplicant 2.1.7 XP (May 2009): the Open1X group has announced the release of Xsupplicant 2.1.7 development version (8/05/2009) for Windows XP. This update includes a lot of bug fixes a number of new features; internationalisation of the user interface (using QT's linquist program), and the capability to compile and run on Linux (with a reduced feature-set). More.

Announcement of Withdrawal of JRS1 Service Tier and Publication of Updated Technical Specification (May 2009): Following the advisory issued in December 2008, JANET(UK) announces that from 1st May 2009 the JANET Roaming eduroam service will no longer support web redirect authentication (captive portal) systems and that the JRS1 tier will be removed from the JRS Technical Specification. After this change comes into effect the 'eduroam' SSID must not be used for any WRD wireless service.

The withdrawal of the JRS1 tier follows an extended period of consultation with the community and comes into effect after having allowed a reasonable period of time for organisations still providing WRD based services to adopt the more secure 802.1x based system. 

The inherent security weakness of WRD systems is widely accepted and the risk of theft of credentials via rogue access points has meant that JANET(UK) has for some time now deprecated the use of web redirect. The eduroam federation does not permit its usage across the European top-level RADIUS servers.Further to this, eduroam hasalsoinsisted that all participating NRENs disallow web redirect over their national top level RADIUS servers. JANET(UK) supports this move and the withdrawal of JRS1 enables continued use of the eduroam SSID and support of international academic remote authentication.

The JRS Technical Specification has been updated in accordance with the above change and also includes a number of improvements in response to issues encountered since the launch of the service. Version 1.1 of the Technical Specification is published on the JANET Roaming web site at: JANET Roaming Technical Specification (doc) (pdf). Summarised details of the major changes can be found here: Summary of most significant changes to the JRS Technical Specification.

We appreciate the efforts that have been made by those organisations that had initially adopted WRD systems in their move to 802.1x and we look forward to the continuing successful provision and development of this service.

Two new joiners (April 2009): we were pleased to welcome Edinburgh Telford College and London Metropolitan University. This increased the total number of UK participating organisations to 102.

JRS celebrates the registration of its 100th participating organisation (March 2009): With the registration of Brunel University there are now 100 organisations participating in the UK. Usage of the service continues to grow - statistics gathered from the NRPS show a dramatic growth over the last six months and we constantly hear reports from administrators of increased uptake.

Dramatic growth in usage of JANET Roaming (March 2009):

The JRS location maps have been upgraded (Feb 2009): now with place names! See the link at the top of this page. We have also introduced new maps for Edinburgh, Greater London and Cental London as a result of the high density of JRS sites in these areas.

IPv6 on the NRPS and JRS Support servers (Feb 2009): whilst the essential JRS infrastructure continues to operate on IPv4, connection to JRS is now possible using IPv6. If you are interested in this please contact JSD to make an enquiry.

New index and entries in the Technology/FAQs section (Jan 2009): an index was introduced into the Technology/FAQs page to help guide readers to the required content. Recent additions to the page include JRS usage figures, ORPS RADIUS platform stats and guidelines on upgrading FreeRADIUS to v 2.0.x. Follow the link at the top of this page.

New Simulated Visitor Test on JRS Support Server (Nov 2008): this new test was added to the JRS Support site in November. By using a test user with the format [your realm]@eduroam.ac.uk and the password of your JRS test account you can check that authentication requests are properly proxied to remote visitors' organisations via the JRS infrastructure.

 

 

 

 

Any problems, comments or suggestions regarding this page, please e-mail the e-mail the JRS service manager.