CENTER FOR COMPUTATION & TECHNOLOGY

LSU Information Technology Services

BATON ROUGE – LSU joins the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Harvard University as the first universities in the United States to enable eduroam, or education roaming, a federated wireless access network. LSU Information Technology Services began offering eduroam wireless access to students, staff and faculty effective Dec. 14.
           
Eduroam is the secure, world-wide wireless network roaming access service developed for the international research and education community.  Eduroam allows campus community members at any participating institution to use wireless network services at any other participating institution worldwide using the same login credentials issued by their host universities.  Members of the LSU campus community will now be able to seamlessly access wireless networks and then the Internet, while visiting campuses around the world. 

The service is available in 36 countries and on hundreds of campuses around the globe. It is widely adopted in both Europe and Asia, and efforts are underway to broaden its use in the United States at leading research universities. 
           
Through eduroam, LSU students, researchers, staff and faculty will be able to use their @lsu.edu credentials to authenticate to wireless networks at universities abroad. Furthermore, guests from other eduroam institutions will be able to access the LSU wireless network using their own institutional credentials while visiting LSU. LSU expects this service to ease research collaborations with visiting international scholars and to make wireless access easier on our community as they travel overseas in scholarly pursuits.
           
“We are proud to be in a leadership position in the U.S., offering eduroam services to our faculty, students and staff when they visit campuses in other countries, and also enabling their colleagues who are visiting the Baton Rouge campus to similarly gain easy yet secure Internet access via wireless networking,” said Brian D. Voss, LSU vice chancellor for information technology.
 
Voss pointed out that LSU’s underlying information technology, or IT, infrastructure – especially its pervasive wireless networking using the most advanced protocols on the market – positioned LSU to become a leader in this area. 
 
“LSU has been building an excellent IT infrastructure and providing top tier services as a result of its Flagship IT Strategy. The deployment of eduroam is yet another sign that we are achieving national prominence in the provision of IT in support of the National Flagship Agenda,” he said.
           
LSU researchers like Geoffrey C. Clayton, LSU professor of physics and astronomy, are ready to try out eduroam. “I am looking forward to using this service while I am on sabbatical this spring. I think it will make working from abroad a lot easier,” he said.

“Researchers at our center often collaborate on projects as part of international teams, working frequently with colleagues in Europe and Asia and traveling there often to do work at other universities and scientific laboratories,” said LSU Center for Computation & Technology Interim Director Stephen David Beck. “Guaranteeing wireless access through eduroam will make it much easier and more convenient for LSU researchers to travel overseas to be part of international research teams, and they can focus directly on the research taking place without having to worry about accessing wireless or gaining credentials to use another university’s network.”
           
Even LSU students like first-year public relations student Skyler Bourgeois are looking forward to eduroam usage. Bourgeois said, “I think it is pretty neat, and it will save a lot of hassle for travelers trying to get Internet access.”

For more information about eduroam, visit www.eduroam.org on the Web.  LSU’s Information Technology Services organization is available to support use of eduroam on its campus. LSU’s traveling community members and interested persons should look for details of where eduroam can be accessed worldwide and how to use it at www.lsu.edu/eduroam, or look for articles on eduroam in LSU’s groundbreaking online support environment, GROK at http://grok.lsu.edu and search for eduroam.