Transcript Majority government funded, or operating on behalf of a

Access Everywhere
Recent developments in the UK’s
mobility strategy for education and
research
Mark O’Leary, TNC 2011 Prague
Changing Landscape
Excellent fixed infrastructure is
no longer enough.
•Changing modes of education delivery
•Increased remote study
•Lifelong learning
•Research demands
Mobility
Our users are mobile,
and demand access
to their resources
‘any time, any place’.
Requirement
• Must be “Broadband”
– ‘Digital Britain’ report in 2009 defines this as
2Mb/s
• Must be (inter)national in scope
• Must reach students on their platforms of
choice
Technology
• 802.11 Wi-Fi is the obvious delivery mechanism...
• ... and eduroam is the obvious way to deploy Wi-Fi
• Other technologies:
– WiMAX opportunity lost
– LTE a few years away
– 3G isn’t reliably broadband
Strategy
• Maximise Wi-Fi eduroam footprint
• Improve eduroam ease of use
• Reduce eduroam barriers to adoption
• Add a 3G component for areas where WiFi is impractical
New venues
• Temporary deployments
– meeting support
– ‘Visited Site’ kits for the
cultural sector
• ‘eduroam in the cloud’
– Centrally-managed IdP
functions
New modes of delivery
• Public transport trial
– Icomera hardware on coaches
• Long range external coverage trial
– 500m+ range at standard EIRP with Altius
hardware?
New Sectors
a) NHS Gateway Project Phase II demonstrator
– 1,121 Hospitals, 10,300 GP surgeries
b) Bootstrapping from the UKAMF
– 3,941 Secondary Schools in the UK
c) Public Service Network Initiatives
– High assurance roaming federation work with GCHQ
– Local government integration
New Sectors
• Public libraries
– ~4,500 public libraries in the UK
– 58% of the population hold a library card
– Challenge from Minister to allow general
public to use wireless devices securely
– Is an ‘eduroam variant’ one way to achieve
this?
Implications
Non-education eligibility for JRS:
“Majority government funded, or operating
on behalf of a government-funded body”
• ‘sector descriptor’ VSA
– option to filter at UK top level proxy
JANET 3G
A 3G SIM data service delivered by JANET(UK) in
partnership with AQL over the Three network – goes live
July 2011
• Based around the same
credentials Wi-Fi eduroam uses
• Allows use of organisationowned IP range
• Price models tailored to
education
Finding coverage
Users need help configuring their devices
and finding where connectivity is available,
particularly for Wi-Fi eduroam.
‘eduroam companion’ (TBC)
– multifunction iOS app
– another Southampton/JANET(UK)
collaboration
eduroam companion
• Locate and route to nearby instances
• Discover ‘flavour’ of eduroam deployed
• Tag exact location of availability
– ‘crowd sourced’ coverage maps
• International relevance
• Coming to the app store ‘soon’
eduroam companion
Not vapourware!
Hopefully a live demo if we have
location coverage in the room
App development by Ashley Browning,
supervised by Dr Tim Chown
A call to arms
• We can only provide useful location-aware tools to
users if we have accurate service location data
• Is setting the location of every AP on campus to
the coordinates of the centre of your city good
enough any more?
• JANET(UK) investigating an Android-based AP
mapping tool to help
Summary
‘Access Everywhere’ is a challenging demand, but with technologies
available today, we can come close to achieving it.
JANET(UK) is pioneering some new approaches: we want to share our
experience and partner with other interested NRENs.
Hopefully, pan-European pervasive access tailored for education and
sustainable as a shared service with other public sectors will be
available one day.
Questions?
Mark.O’[email protected]