With two sons at university, I imagine they take their instant wifi access on their campus for granted.

The first secure roaming internet access of this kind was launched 10 years ago by eduroam® which has today been celebrating its landmark achievement at the prestigious 2012 TERENA Networking Conference – with special recognition for the role of Klaas Wierenga (pic) who first identified a need for this kind of connectivity.

I discovered this as I am working on a project with DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to European) in Cambridge, providers of ground-breaking and innovative advanced network connectivity which is widely used by leading researchers around the world, including the Large Hadron Collider in Cern.

Klaas suggested his idea to colleagues at the European National Research and Education Network (NREN) community and they took up his idea. As a result,  eduroam® is now available to tens thousands of researchers and students globally, enabling them to access instant wifi when visiting academic and research institutions globally by simply switching on their laptop.

The NRENs are global partners with DANTE, the provider of GÉANT, which connects more than 85 million researchers and students with fast and powerful bandwidth connectivity of 40 Gbps, enabling them to work collaboratively and accelerate their research by sharing large data files within seconds. eduroam®i s now actively used in more than 50 countries, with 676 locations in the UK, including both Cambridge and Oxford. The locations can easily be found thanks to the launch of a new eduroam® app for the iPhone and iPaded, enabling users to benefit instantly from simple, free connectivity after downloading the free app from iTunes.

Klaas, who was working for the Dutch NREN organisation, SURFnet, when he came up with his original idea, looks back on what made him think of it:

“I realized there was no reason why visitors from SURFnet-connected institutions should not get access to the campus and SURFnet network. Following some initial experimentation, on 30 May 2002 I emailed my idea to experts from the wider European NREN community who were participating in the TERENA Task Force on Mobility. It was the perfect place to get feedback and improve on half-baked ideas. I also realized that what we were trialling on a small scale in the Netherlands could be broadened out across other countries.”

One of the most recent countries to subscribe to eduroam® is Malawi, the third country in east and southern Africa to roll out eduroam® to improve connectivity for their students, as well as cater for international visitors, saying it will make Malawi proud if they are sited on the eduroam® global map.

Without access to high-speed roaming networks such as this, many research projects could experience delays and frustrations. Researchers in Africa understand how advanced technology is vital to help them engage in innovate joint projects which will one day benefit mankind.