Operating Eduroam Services in Nepal

Project title: Operating Eduroam Services in Nepal
Project leader: Kishor Panth
Team members: Indiver Badal, Dr. Bhushan Raj Shrestha, Rajan Parajuli, Niraj Acharya, Nirajan Parajuli
Support from: TEIN/AARNET
Project Period: December 2015 – December 2016
Background
Eduroam provides easy network access when visiting other institutions on the same network. The users of Eduroam can access to the network of other Eduroam enable member sites easily and securely using their credentials from their home site. Authentication of users is performed by their home institution securely, without revealing username or password to the visited institution. As Eduroam is already available in more than 75 countries and territories, Nepalese users also can avail benefits of this service while visiting other Eduroam enabled institutions in and out of the country.
This project to implement Eduroam service in Nepal through NREN was supported by AARNET, the Australian NREN; Trans Eurasia Information Network (TEIN) funded AARNET to connect seven Asia-Pacific countries.
Objectives:
  • To set up Eduroam services in Nepal.
  • To help in deploying the services in different institutions across the country.
Activities:
The Eduroam project consisted of three activities. At first, NREN engineers were participated in a train-the-trainer workshop. After that, NREN engineers conducted a training to NREN member institutions in Kathmandu. Finally, NREN engineers visited all the selected sites, deployed access points, and operated Eduroam services in some of the hospitals and colleges mainly based in Kathmandu.

1. Train-the-Trainer workshop
At the APAN41 meeting held in January 2016 in Manila, a 2-day Eduroam workshop was conducted for the project which targeted national research and education networks from different countries. Two senior engineers from NREN participated in the training.

During the workshop, AARNet and project partners – JNU and KISTI (South Korea), SingAREN (Singapore) and REANNZ (New Zealand) provided hands-on training to the NRENs to skill them up as Eduroam trainers in their respective countries. The training included setting up Eduroam, simulated wireless roaming and effective management of a sustainable Eduroam service using tools developed by the project.

2. Eduroam operation training to the NREN members institutions
NREN organised one day training to the technical person of NREN members institutions. The contents of the training was about the benefits of eduroam services, basic requirements, setting up procedures, creating and managing users etc. Total 15 network engineers participated the training from different member institutions.

A group photo of Eduroam Participants

Mr. Kishor Panth and Mr. Indiver Badal conducting the Eduroam Training

3. Deployment in NREN member institutions
After the training, NREN team visited different member institutions and deployed Access Points, which were purchased from the project budget for establishing Eduroam services. At the end of November 2017, NREN successfully connected nine member institutions.

Handover of access points and setting up Eduroam services at different sites

After this project, NREN is working as a National Roaming Operator (NRO) for Nepal and helping institutions to deploy the Eduroam service. NREN is still deploying Eduroam in the institutions that show their interest even after the completion of this project.