UW staff, students and visiting colleagues can now gain local and global Internet access.
At universities around the world, visitors can freely access Internet resources thanks to a service called eduroam (education roaming). Now, eduroam has arrived at UW-Madison, with activation of the first production-ready site at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on the 1300 block of University Ave.
The new service enables visitors from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity at both locations by simply opening a laptop and entering login credentials from their home institution. Likewise, members of the UW-Madison community now are able to connect easily to the university’s home systems if visiting any of the hundreds of eduroam-enabled institutions around the world.
“I am excited that we have taken the first step toward expanding Internet access for visitors to our campus,” says UW-Madison Chief Information Officer Bruce Maas. “The activation of eduroam was accomplished through a collaborative effort that involved chief technical officer Miron Livny, Mike Blodgett and the information technology staff for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery; and the Middleware Systems Technology and Network Services groups at DoIT.”
“This has been a rewarding partnership,” Maas adds, “and it helps UW-Madison keep pace with the needs of the international research and education community.”
Providing Internet access using eduroam was made possible by upgrades to wireless routers and other equipment at Discovery. UW-Madison is coordinating a plan to continue production rollouts of eduroam service at other buildings across campus.
While Internet access through eduroam is just getting started here, students, researchers and staff with UW NetIDs can use eduroam at other institutions. More than 85 universities in the U.S. and Canada and hundreds more around the world are eduroam members. Participating institutions include UW campuses in Milwaukee (public buildings only), Green Bay, Parkside, and Stevens Point, and the University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
For more information about eduroam and a list of institutions that use it worldwide, see http://www.eduroam.org/