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Technology infrastructure

Add list and description of products and resources used to deliver main functionalities of the service. Add service technical architecture - i.e. its good to have a conceptual architectural diagram and topology diagram.

Supporting infrastructure

The confederation infrastructure relies on a distributed set of AAA servers. The current configuration uses RADIUS as the AAA protocol. There are various transport protocols to carry RADIUS payloads, as of May 2012, the following protocols exist: RADIUS/UDP, RADIUS/TCP, RADIUS/DTLS and RADIUS/TLS. eduroam supports transport over RADIUS/UDP and RADIUS/TLS, and recommends the use of RADIUS/TLS. Routing of RADIUS messages, independently of the transport used, is implemented in two ways: a baseline routing model, based on a hierarchy of RADIUS servers, and a dynamic-routing model, based on DNS service discovery. The dynamic-routing model is only supported over RADIUS/TLS.

Full explanation of technology infrastructure is provided at in eduroam Service Definition.


European Top-level RADIUS Servers (ETLRS) for the European Confederation are operated by partners of GEANT project -  SURFnet (Netherlands) and DeIC (Denmark). Top-level RADIUS Servers are deployed using Radiator software.


Each server has a list of connected, federation top-level domains (.nl, .dk, .hr, .de etc.) serving the appropriate NRENs. The servers also maintain exception rules for domains whose federation membership is not immediately identifiable in the realm (typically gTLD realms such as ’.edu’, ‘.eu’, ‘.net’, etc.). The servers accept requests for the federation domains they are responsible for, and subsequently forward them to the associated RADIUS server for that federation, and transport the response (i.e. result of the authentication request) back. Requests for the federation domains that the servers are not responsible for are forwarded to the proper federation TLRS. 

Supporting infrastructure

Monitoring, Diagnostics and Metering

The basic purpose of the eduroam monitoring, diagnostics and metering service is:  

  • to test the functionality of the FLRSs, TLRSs and the whole confederation infrastructure.
  • to collect information about the authentication traffic from the FLRSs.
 Information is provided via the monitoring website  that is operated by GEANT project partner -  SRCE. Monitoring website is an in-house development for GEANT project, developed and maintained by SRCE. Source code is available at ?

The eduroam monitoring and diagnostics element reports the results of the tests, both as a colour-coded map and as graphs showing the response-time behaviour. An alert system is also implemented in order to inform OT and NRO responsible stuff about any malfunctions in the service as soon as they occur.

The metering element relies on the F-Ticks tool. Information about F-Ticks, as well as the collected data, is available via the F-Ticks website [F-Ticks].

Some of those are public, while others are restricted to predefined user groups. The decision on the availability of the information lies with the eduroam Steering Group (SG). The eduroam monitoring, diagnostics and metering service is run and maintained by the Operations Team (OT).

 eduroam Database

The information stored in the eduroam database is collected with the help from NROs and includes:  NRO representatives and respective contacts.  eduroam SP and IdP official contacts.  Information about eduroam Service Providers (SP location, technical info).  Monitoring information.  Information about the usage of the service. Information about the eduroam database design and data collection practice is available via the website [eduroam Database]. A web interface to the database is implemented, which allows various views of the database content. Some of these are public, while others are restricted to predefined user groups. The decision on the availability of the information lies with the eduroam SG. Data exchange with other applications related to the eduroam service is subject to prior approval by the eduroam SG. The eduroam database and its web interface is run and maintained by the OT.

Trouble Ticketing System (TTS)

The OT runs and maintains a Trouble Ticketing System (TTS) [TTS] in order to document its work, and to allow authorised users from the predefined user groups to report any irregularities in the eduroam service.


eduroam Website

The eduroam website [eduroam] is run and maintained by the OT. It is the central information point for eduroam users at the same time providing information and links for all user groups (see Section 3, Users).Add list and descriptions of products and resources used to deliver supporting services such as specialized monitoring and measuring systems, configuration management system, issue/ticket reporting system, etc.)

Cost Benefit Analysis

Provide URL to last valid CBA