What tech support is available

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Page updated: 5/08/2020

 

Choose from:

  • Online step-by-step implementation guide
  • Troubleshooting guides
  • eduroam(UK) Support Server test facilities
  • E-mail / phone support from Technical Specialists
  • Monthly online clinic
  • Staying in touch with eduroam(UK) and the UK eduroam community
  • Training courses
  • Consultancy Service

Online step-by-step implementation guide

Essential reading and reference guide >>> Implementing eduroam Roadmap

Troubleshooting Guides

A troubleshooting flowchart to help IT Specialists during eduroam implementation to resolve prolems at the RADIUS server level. eduroam Administrator Troubleshooting Flowchart. The document splits the troubleshooting process based on the ID provider of the user: i) your own users experiencing problems when trying to authenticate from a remote site and ii) visitor authentication, focussing on authentication problems faced by visitors to you from other sites.

A troubleshooting flowchart to help IT Support staff solve user connection and authentication problems has been produced. This is not a step-by-step guide to the setup of all available supplicants: instead it aims to point support staff towards common user-centred issues and to guide staff in troubleshooting their eduroam infrastructure to resolve difficulties for both own organisation users when roaming and visitors to the organisation. eduroam IT Support Staff Troubleshooting Flowchart (best printed at A3 size) pdf)

eduroam(UK) Support Server Test Facilities

We have also developed a range of test facilities built into the eduroam(UK) Support server:

  • Background service status monitoring - roaming user authentication test and ORPS ping check
  • Backgound service technical compliance verification - daily refresh of auth check, service info web site, assertion status
  • On-demand romaing user authenticaiton test
  • On-demand visitor simulation authentication test

Click here for information on the test facilities.

E-mail / phone Support from Technical Specialists

eduroam Technical Support is available in the following areas:

  • General enquires about the service - features and benefits, service details
  • Pre-deployment queries - deployment planning, selection of ORPS systems, guidance on implementation eduroam(UK) Technical Specification
  • Support during implementation - OPRS setup, user machine configuration
  • Post implementation technical issue resolution

After checking for an answer on the FAQs page you can lodge an enquiry by e-mail or telephone with the Jisc Service Desk, requesting eduroam and the stating the subject of your enquiry or use the online form (which feeds into JSD anyway). Any screen dumps, log files etc should be e-mailed to JSD. Nb. technical support enquiries can only be accepted from customer technical contacts registered with the Janet Service Desk. A numbered JSD ticket will be created in the Janet CDF Help Desk system that can be used in any follow up query.

It is important that new tech support enquiries are always sent to the Jisc Service Desk. They will be passed to eduroam Support rapidly. By going through JSD, a ticket is opened so that we (eduroam), Jisc Service Desk (JSD) and yourselves can track and chase up the progress on enquiries. Enquiries sent directly to the eduroam mailbox will be forwarded to JSD, but rapid response is not assured. If you send enquiries directly to Loughborough you will be bypassing the process and there is risk that the query will be auto-routed into a holding mailbox where it will not receive a timely answer.

Monthly Online Clinic

Held at 14:00-15:00 on the first Tuesday of every month, the online clinic is a fixed monthly slot we reserve for more interactive, wide ranging and informal contact with our community. The clinics are intended to be informal drop-in sessions for eduroam sys admins where you can chat with the eduroam(UK) support team about any issues, problems, concerns or raise any questions you have. The sessions also present an opportunity to discuss issues with other members of the community.

The clinic is run using Adobe Connect which supports participation by audio and keyboard. We can also share screens on Support server to help illustrate or diagnose issues. There's no need to register, just join on https://jisc.adobeconnect.com/eduroam/ but please add your name plus organisation in the field ‘name’ when entering the 'room'.

Staying in touch with eduroam(UK) and the UK eduroam community

Keep in touch with us and your counterparts at other organisations participating in eduroam:

  • Service announcements and alerts mailing list - as a condition of membership, all sys admins are automatically subscribed to the eduroamuk-support@jiscmail.ac.uk mailing list. This is a private and moderated list used for important alerts, announcements, and notices relating to the service
  • eduroam-uk discussion mailing list - it is recommended that eduroam sys admins subscribe to the general eduroam-uk@jiscmail.ac.uk list. This is an open list and you can post messages to your counterparts at other eduroam(UK) member organisations - for instance to call upon the experience and expertise or other participants or to kick off a discussion about a topic of the moment. Go to https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/eduroam-uk
  • Visit the Support server - as a logged in sys admin, visit your organisation Status summary page on Support server and to check the service at another member org location enter the org name in the 'Search eduroam members' box in the Status summary panel to be taken to the Status summary for that member. You'll find the e-mail addresses of the registered sys admins, which you can use for org-org troubleshooting
  • Join us in the monthly online clinics
  • Follow us on Twitter - @eduroamUK

Training Courses

The eduroam Fundamentals course was introduced in July 2009. Courses are held regularly at a number of venures around the UK. The course provides delegates with an understanding of how eduroam operates at both basic technical and support level. It includes an overview of how to configure user equipment and solve some of the issues those users might face. The course also covers the configuration of wireless and wired clients for use on the eduroam service on Janet, logfile examination and methods of fault finding and reporting.

The course is intended for IT staff tasked with supporting an eduroam service within their organisations or wishing to gain a high level appreciation of what is involved in implementing the service. This might include support staff wanting to learn more about user equipment setup and secure wireless configuration and service managers examining what their support staff need to know.

For further details, please see: eduroam fundamentals Course

eduroam Implementation. This course covers in depth the theory and practice of implementing an eduroam service. It includes installation and configuration of RADIUS servers to support a Visited eduroam service, together with guidance on access point configuration for 802.1X and hints on how to integrate RADIUS with the user database to set up a Home service. The extensive hands-on work is based on FreeRADIUS, but the concepts are of course applicable to all platforms. Some familiarity with unix/linux systems would be beneficial and it would be useful to brush up on using a text editor such as vi (for editing configuration files).

For further details, please see: eduroam Implementation

Consultancy Service

Jisc now offers chargeable on-site eduroam consultancy services. So if your deployment has got stuck as the result of encountering a technical hurdle or lack of time, or you have had a change of staff and need to update your deployment or want to upgrade FreeRADIUS or NPS, or you want to audit your implementation or are merging organisations, then consider our competitively priced service. To discuss your requirements, please contact service@ja.net, quoting 'eduroam'.

Can we recommend any commercial RADIUS consultancy providers or outsourcing service providers? RADIUS consultancy is now available more widely from the commercial sector, some of the ones we are aware of are listed below, but this in no way implies any endorsement. You may also find that a company has only specific expertise in the limited suite of products that it sells or supports.

We would caution that eduroam deployment should not be seen as a one-off fit and forget exercise. Not only does the technology evolve, but changes made by product vendors unrelated to your deployment may have adverse impacts and you need to be able to react to these challenges. Network access authentication of your users is, we feel, a core service and we strongly recommend building up your in-house skills and not being reliant on external parties. eduroam deployment involves many aspects of your network and the quality of your service will be dependent on how thoroughly these are addressed (follow the implementation roadmap) and continual review (ITIL circle).

We can't endorse any particular commercial support company but you could try some of the following: Chorus Global Ltd, European Electronique Ltd, Essington Computer Consultancy Ltd, ITGL (Cisco), Khipu Networks Ltd, Logicalis UK, ADA Networks Ltd, Mancala Networks, Network RADIUS, Pervasive Networks Ltd. If a company would like to be considered for listed here, please contact service@ja.net, quoting 'eduroam'.