eduroam is a simple, easy and secure Wi-Fi connectivity service available at hundreds of hotspots in Ireland and thousands around the world.
What is eduroam?
eduroam, short for education roaming, is a Wi-Fi service which enables students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to securely access the internet at their college/university and whilst visiting other eduroam enabled locations.
How does eduroam work?
eduroam is a Wi-Fi service set identifier (SSID) that is broadcast over a Wi-Fi network. Similar to the way a mobile device immediately connects to a known home Wi-Fi network when its owner enters the entrance hall, a user’s phone automatically connects to eduroam as they walk onto a campus, or any other location where eduroam is available. eduroam is preconfigured on the user’s device, meaning there is no reconfiguration needed, or indeed no cost to use the service, as they roam from one location to another.
Why eduroam?
The benefits of eduroam are immense for individuals, institutions and service providers.
For individuals, the ability to turn on a smartphone, tablet or laptop and immediately get high performance, secure Wi-Fi access transforms the learning experience. No more needing to find free (and possibly insecure) Wi-Fi hotspots – the users’ existing credentials are used to access Wi-Fi wherever they need to connect. Visit eduroam for users to learn more.
For institutions, there is no longer a need to provide insecure shared usernames and passwords or to respond to requests for access. For service providers, it attracts the educational community to their venue and enables participants to access wireless connectivity without assistance. Visit why you should join? page to learn more.
eduroam history
Since its inception in Europe in 2003, eduroam has been a major success story for Research and Education. Starting in 6 countries it has rapidly spread across the world and now students and researchers from over 100 countries can benefit from free, secure, reliable Wi-Fi access wherever they are travelling or studying. eduroam supports over 5 million access authentications every day with over 500,000 international authentications daily. eduroam is truly supporting the vision of a global village for Research and Education.
eduroam in Ireland
eduroam in Ireland is managed by HEAnet, Ireland’s National Education and Research Network. We deliver high-speed internet connectivity and IT shared services to all levels of the Irish education sector – that’s over one million students, researchers and staff relying on our national education network every day. To learn more about HEAnet, please visit www.heanet.ie.
eduroam has been around in Ireland since 2009 and we worked with Universities, Institutes of Technology and other third-level educational organisations to enable eduroam hotspots for students, staff and researchers around the country.
What’s new is our ambition to extend eduroam beyond the campus walls as part of our eduroam Everywhere initiative, supported by Simon Harris T.D., Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, and other government representatives.
Click here to see where eduroam is available in Ireland.
