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School of Physics and Astronomy โ€“ computing
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Eduroam update (2017 April 25)

You may be aware that we are rolling out Eduroam coverage in the School; this is an update.

P&A was one of the first departments on campus to deploy a WiFi service, and we have successfully run the GUPHYSICS and KELVIN networks for some years. This kit is getting old, however, and it is not well-integrated with (for example) GUIDs. Also, the Eduroam service is now both more pervasive and more robust than it was when we last refreshed our local service. Therefore as of about a year ago, we're making a transition to having WiFi supplied by the campus-wide Eduroam service.

The access points are quite expensive, and it will take a couple of years to save the pennies to cover the whole building. We plan to cover the building in phases.

We currently have Eduroam coverage in:

Level 6 is the experiment, intended (i) to confirm that the Eduroam and GUPHYSICS networks could coexist happily (this turns out not to be the case), that (ii) the two networks have well-defined boundaries (this turns out not to be the case), and that (iii) the various firewall rules are compatible with what people need to do (this turns out to be mostly the case, but we already know of some exceptions).

Regarding (i), we have turned off GUPHYSICS base stations in the areas fully covered by Eduroam, and elsewhere tried to keep the two out of each others' way, with incomplete success. Regarding (ii), if you can see both networks with roughly equal strength, we'd be interested in reports of bad or good behaviour (on the part of the network, that is; for entertainingly bad behaviour in wetware, we'll stick to the tabloid press).

We are working with IT Services to try make the Eduroam deployment robust. We will make a point of alerting people likely to be affected by future deployments, when they come along.