[eduroam US status update, February 2010]

["RL 'Bob' Morgan" <rlmorgan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI.  Ken will have more to say about this at the Vienna meeting.

 - RL "Bob"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 08:53:31 -0500
From: Jeffrey Gumpf <jeffrey.gumpf@xxxxxxxx>
To: eduroam@xxxxxxxx
Cc: 'Jeffrey Gumpf' <jeffrey.gumpf@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: eduroam US status update, February 2010


I thought it would be useful to bring everyone up-to-date on the status of
the eduroam-US effort. Progress continues!

 

As we know, Philippe Hanset and his team at the University of Tennessee,
Knoxville (UTK), have been running a Top Level RADIUS Server for the US
eduroam confederation for some time. Six institutions are now actively
connected to the US eduroam confederation: Harvard University, Louisiana
State University (LSU), LSU Health Sciences Center, University of Tennessee
Knoxville, University of Tennessee Space Institute, and Yale University.
Those who are interested in actually connecting to eduroam-US now should
contact Philippe Hanset at UTK (phanset@xxxxxxx).

 

Work is underway by Philippe and his team on a web site with technical and
administrative information about eduroam US.

 

There have been several discussions facilitated by John Borne (LSU) with the
InCommon Federation about providing the policy and organizational support
infrastructure necessary to get the eduroam-US effort underway and operating
on a solid foundation. This makes a lot of sense because InCommon is about
middleware and eduroam is federated middleware effort. So far the
discussions have been very positive and progress continues to be made.

 

Ken Klingenstein has been gracious and very active in bringing the current
eduroam-US effort to the attention of Internet2, InCommon and to the Common
Solutions Group. All those organizations have expressed some interest and
seem generally supportive in seeing the eduroam-US effort move forward.

 

Philippe Hanset and I have applied for both a presentation session and a BOF
session to discuss the eduroam-US at the Spring Internet2 conference. We are
waiting to hear back from the Spring Internet2 conference organizing group
about approval. I will send a subsequent message if that application is
approved.

 

Philippe Hanset (UTK) is in the last stages of applying for a National
Science Foundation grant relating to software for eduroam-US. He is looking
for potential collaborators. Here are the areas Philippe is applying for
support from the NSF:

1)      A collection of software tools, which do not currently exist, to
support the eduroam service in the areas of 

a.       automation (registration of institutions)

b.      monitoring (RADIUS log analysis for security and support)

c.       debugging in an infrastructure that spans across time zones

d.      exploring an integration with PerfSonar, an Internet2 project

2)      An interface between the existing InCommon and eduroam federations
using the SAML standard to enhance the complimentary aspect of the two
services. This work would be done in collaboration with InCommon Federation.

3)      An active participation in the development of eduroam Next
Generation, in collaboration with GN2 and GN3 (Projects funded by the
European Union).

In addition to software development, a major effort will be focused on
documenting the service and its tools as well as writing a Service Level
Agreement and associated policies.

 

The current infrastructure, already installed at UTK, will be converted to a
high-availability system.

 

Philippe Hanset (UTK) has carried and continues to carry much of the burden
for the eduroam-US effort. We thank him for his leadership, determination
and persistence.

 

Jeff