Oswego State recently announced they would be participating in the eduroam network.

Eduroam is an education roaming access service that allows faculty, staff and students to connect to wireless Internet when visiting other schools in the eduroam network.

People from other universities that participate in the eduroam network will also be allowed to connect to Oswego State’s wireless network when visiting the campus, explained Sean Moriarty, Oswego State’s chief technology officer of Campus Technology Services.

“Eduroam is a service that a number of universities offer across the world,” Moriarty said. “It’s very popular in Europe and most the universities in Canada have it. The idea is that if you run eduroam you should be able to go to another university that uses eduroam and just hop right on to the wireless network.”

Many other schools across the U.S. are using the network. There is a website available to see what other schools are participating in the eduroam network.

“Right now, universities that are using it include Syracuse, Cornell,” Moriarty said. “In the state of New York it would be all the SUNY University centers, so Buffalo, Albany, Binghamton and Stony Brook. But there are other universities too, once you set up eduroam on your computer, if you go to any of those universities you can just hop on their wireless network.”

According to Moriarty, using the eduroam network is easier than signing in as a guest because Oswego State’s guest network is still a network that you have to be an invited guest to use.

“If you’re using Wi-Fi, you set it up just like you would your Oswego-Secure, so to speak,” Moriarty said. “You would just choose eduroam network and set it up and then you’re good.You just put in your email address and your LakerNet password.”

However, eduroam may be restricted in certain areas while on campus depending on that particular university’s policy.

“It depends where they offer eduroam. Here on campus, we are not offering eduroam in the dorms, we are only offering it in the academic buildings,” Moriarty said. “It depends on the other universities’ policies.”

Eduroam is allowing an easier way to travel from schools and remain connected to a wireless network without any problems.

“When we have guests here from other universities, it will make it a lot more seamless when they come onto campus and are able to use wireless right away,” Moriarty said.

Students feel that participating in the eduroam network would be a good idea. Samantha Schou, a junior at Oswego State, thinks it would be a convenient when visiting other schools.

“It would be convenient if I were to go visit a friend at another campus that was participating, but since Oswego is only offering it in academic buildings, I can see where that could create problems for those people who come and stay in the dorms and might want to work on homework,” Schou said. “For athletes, it would be a good idea so that they can do stuff like homework on their down time at another school.”