eduroam SP

Basic deployment considerations for wireless LANs

An eduroam wireless network is a wireless network. This sounds trivial, but it is important to keep in mind that

• a poorly managed Wireless LAN won't magically become better by naming it eduroam. Before diving into eduroam-specific configuration, make sure you understand how to manage
  • WiFi coverage
  • bandwidth requirements
  • enough DHCP addresses to accomodate all clients
• by naming the network eduroam, you are becoming part of a world-wide recognised brand. Arriving users will think of this being an eduroam network, with a set of expectations for such networks. If your wireless network fails to deliver in the points mentioned above, users will consider this an eduroam failure and your installation will hurt the global brand eduroam, not only your own site and users.

This section provides general advice regarding eduroam deployment on a wireless LAN. It does not include information on general WLAN network planning and setup, it only covers topics essential to deploying eduroam on an already setup wireless LAN. 

Administrative obligations of eduroam SPs

The basic requirement for and eduroam SP is that the underlaying WLAN must be able to support IEEE 802.1X authentications, WPA2/AES support and, if you also want other networks, multi-SSID support. This is usually the case with today's network equipment. If you want to distinguish traffic beloning to the eduroam network from other traffic, you also need to deploy VLANs in your network.

For eduroam, you need to add information of the RADIUS server that you will be using to your WLAN controller (or stand-alone access point). You will need to add the IP address of the RADIUS server as well as the shared secret, which is basically a string of characters that has been agreed on by you and the operator of the RADIUS server. You may also have to add information about the ports to use, which are 1812 for authentication and 1813 for accounting.

Once you have added the RADIUS server you need to create the eduroam SSID. This must be a network with 802.1X and WPA2/AES enabled and the SSID must be eduroam and this SSID should not be hidden. For this eduroam network, you still need to define that the RADIUS server defined previously need to be used. 

In this wiki it is not possible to keep up-to-date guidelines on how to set up eduroam on all wireless equipment on the market. The best way to set up eduroam on your network is to do the initial setup according to the manufacturer's guidelines and thereafter, checking the same guidelines on how to apply the eduroam-spesific settings mentioned above. 

In order to check which ports should be open for the eduroam end users, please check out the eduroam Policy Service Definition document, particularly Chapter 6.3.3.

Set up of WiFi hotspots

All of the solutions presented below support the basic requirements for an eduroam SP: support for IEEE 802.1X authentications, WPA2/AES support. When deploying eduroam, deployers often want to make use of additional features such as multi-SSID support, dynamic VLAN assignment and others. Every section contains a table with a short overview of their support of such additional useful features.

Cisco (controller-based solutions)

Cisco (stand-alone APs with IOS)

Aruba

Trapeze (Juniper)

Fortinet (Formerly Meru)

Lancom

Apple AirPort Express

Set up of networking equipment in the network core

Since an eduroam hotspot always uses the RADIUS protocol to connect to a RADIUS authentication server, your network setup must allow this RADIUS communication. This includes opening firewalls for traffic from the WLAN equipment (AP/Controller) to UDP port 1812 (do not confuse this with TCP!). The RADIUS protocol can easily create UDP fragments, and will not function fully without UDP fragmentation support. Be sure to check your equipment whether forwarding of UDP fragments is supported and allowed.

If you deploy your own RADIUS server for eduroam SP purposes (see below), also make sure that its own uplinks to your National Roaming Operator are open in the same way.

Set up of eduroam SP RADIUS servers