Mobile Support Services

Recent developments in Janet’s mobility strategy for education

and researchMark O’Leary, Belnet November 2011

A 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’.

Requirements

• 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 – an 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 Wi-Fi is impractical

eduroam - new venues

• Temporary deployments– meeting support– ‘Visited Site’ kits for the

cultural sector

• ‘eduroam in the cloud’– Centrally-managed IdP

functions

eduroam - new venues

• Public transport trial– Icomera hardware on coaches– Trial went live 15/11

eduroam - 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

eduroam - 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 3GA 3G SIM data service delivered by JANET(UK) in

partnership with AQL over the Three network – launched August 2011

• Based around the same credentials Wi-Fi eduroam uses

• Allows use of organisation-owned IP range

• Price models tailored to education

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 - iOSNot vapourware!

• Service locations & characteristics

• Route directions

• Tagging

App development by Ashley Browning, supervised by Dr Tim Chown

eduroam companion - Android

Not vapourware either!

Expect to submit to app store in January

App ported and expanded by GDP2012 group, supervised by Dr Tim Chown

eduroam companion - Android

• Establish new AP locations by crowd-sourced tagging.

• Data (AP locations, details of service) fed back into official database

• Twitter integration

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 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 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’Leary@ja.net