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The JANET Roaming Service entered production service on May 2nd 2006. It is now open to academic and research organisations wishing to apply to join the current 32 UK participants and benefit from enabling their staff to enjoy trouble-free network authentication at participating sites in the UK and throughout eduroam.

The JRS Management Briefing and Business Case document and the JRS User Guide and JRS Connection Guide have just been published and can be found at Documentation.

The Need

• Visitors to JANET sites want authenticated, secure AND easy access to full network connection for their own laptops, PDAs and from host organisation PCs provided for use by guests - to home networks, the Internet and permitted areas of host organisations’ networks

• JANET sites want to provide visitor access logon without IT Support workload

The Solution

• JANET Roaming - enables logon using own username and password

                                     regardless of location

Demand for visitor network access at JANET connected organisations has grown in recent years and will continue to do so. This is adding to the administrative burden faced by local IT staff in setting up guest accounts and is causing inconvenience for visitors. The need has therefore arisen for an infrastructure to reduce this burden and to provide hassle free guest access for visitors. The JANET Roaming Service provides just such a solution and will in turn promote effective collaboration on research and academic projects.

JRS has developed from Location Independent Networking (LIN), which facilitates authenticated independent guest network access at JANET connected organisations and as part of the eduroam federation (www.eduroam.org), at institutions across Europe, Australia and Taiwan.

The service is free at the point of use. To participate, organisations have to provide and set up a RADIUS server which, by referencing the JRS National RADIUS Proxy Server network, permits guest users to be authenticated using their own home network unique credentials. This will provide the guest user with network access from the visited organisation and (depending upon home network remote access systems) access to the home network. All this is achieved without any administrative burden or added complexities for either the guest user or the local host network IT staff, once the system has been implemented.

UK organisations currently participating in the extended trial:

England

Scotland

Wales

Northern Ireland

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What is in Place for the Service Launch?

Availability of Information

In the run up to the service launch, a great deal of effort has been put in to ensure that organisations wishing to join can get access to a wide range of information about the service, what is involved in setting it up and how to join. The following key documents are available on the JANET Roaming web site:

• Business Case and Management Briefing document,
• Deployment and Implementation Guide with Case Studies,
• User Guide
• Technical Specification
• Participation Policy document

Infrastructure Deployment

To enable the service to function and to provide integration with eduroam, an infrastructure of three national RADIUS proxy servers has been deployed at Leeds, Reading and London on the JANET backbone. These servers provide a high-performance, fault-tolerant network, forwarding RADIUS authentication requests between participating organisations' on-site RADIUS servers and to RADIUS servers throughout eduroam.

Implementation and Support Service

To underpin the service and to enable organisations to participate in the scheme, a comprehensive, fully resourced support structure has been put in place providing:

• Information, advice and guidance on the service; features and benefits
• JANET Roaming area of the JANET(UK) web site
• A joining procedure
• Pre-deployment support – planning, selection of RADIUS and supplicant systems
• Technical support during implementation
• JANET Roaming availability map to show where and how JRS can be used
• Post-implementation support on technical issues
• Dedicated JRS-support web site for participants only
• Dedicated e-mailing list for technical and service announcements
• A chargeable consultancy service

To find out more about JANET Roaming or to request to join JANET Roaming see:

www.ja.net/services/network-services/roaming

For project background information see:

Network Development Location Independent Networking

Edward Wincott

Applied Network Services

e.wincott@ja.net

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Any problems, comments or suggestions regarding this page, please e-mail the JRS service manager jrs@ja.net