...WORK IN PROGRESS ...
The scope of this document is to provide a detailed analysis of the network requirements of the project and the availability of eduroam at the initial pilot schools and other locations in the schools’ neighbourhood. To this end, network connectivity at the schools is examined, and an impact of the Up2U ecosystem services on the underlying network is considered.
1. Schools - overview on Internet connectivity
This section summarises results of Up2U surveys filled up by the initial pilot schools. The surveying activity was a result of common efforts and cooperation of Work Packages no. 3, 5, 6. Information on school's connectivity and policies has been provided by 29 initial pilot schools from 6 different countries (Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and Spain).
1.1 Bandwidth and connection
More than half (55%) of the schools who responded in the survey access internet thanks to NRENs. The bandwidth of at least 80 Mb/s is present in 40% of schools for downstream and 30% of schools for upstream.
1.2 Internal network arrangement
Most of the initial pilot schools have an internal wired network in all (52%) or some (28%) classrooms. WiFi coverage is very high - 65% of schools who responded in the survey has 100% coverage in classrooms. Only 7% of schools declare that there is no WiFi at school at all.
1.3 Security and policies
Hardware firewalls, as well as UTM (Unified Threat Management) devices, are present in many of the initial pilot schools, although in a significant amount of answers school principals were not sure about the availability of these solutions at their schools. In all the cases of presence of an UTM device at school, the most important features like the spam filter, antivirus filter, and content filter were turned on. Only 1 of 19 schools who responded to the question concerning BYOD (bring your own device) policy disallow to use students' mobile devices at school but is willing to change policy if there is a good reason.
2. Eduroam
2.1. General overview of eduroam
Eduroam (education roaming) is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community.
Having started in Europe, eduroam has gained momentum throughout the research and education community and is now available in 89 territories worldwide (https://www.eduroam.org/where/).
Eduroam allows students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity across campus and when visiting other participating institutions by simply opening their laptop.
High quality, security, worldwide availability in numerous places like campuses, museums, libraries, labs, public places, as well as ease of use of eduroam make it an ideal internet access supporting Always-on education concept.
2.2. Eduroam at schools
According to the results of WP5 survey, currently eduroam is not widespread at schools - only 10% (3 of 29 pilot schools who responded to the survey) of school principals declares that there is eduroam access at their school, only 1 school declared that its students can authenticate to eduroam.
Only 10% pilot school declares that eduroam is available at other locations, either near the school or that are usually visited by students of the school. According to analyses presented in Section 2.3, eduroam is available within 1 km from the 37% of the pilot schools, which clearly shows that students and teachers do not benefit from eduroam's potential. The issue could be further investigated in the scope of the Up2U project. At the first glance, it seems to be related to the weak popularisation of eduroam in the educational world, eduroam policies or legal issues rather than to the infrastructure limitations.
Therefore, the objective of the project seems to be justifiable - not to deploy eduroam at new places, but to study the current availability of eduroam and to investigate solutions that enable students to get access to the network at existing locations, that can be then covered by the formal and informal learning scenarios.
2.3. Eduroam near schools
This section contains summary on eduroam availability in the neighbourhood of the pilot schools taking part in the Up2U project. The summary is a result of comparison of information accessible in the eduroam service location database (https://monitor.eduroam.org/map_service_loc.php) with information on localisations of Up2U pilot schools supplied by the pilot countries.
Verification of possibility to incorporate the selected eduroam locations into the formal and informal learning scenarios was conducted with the pilot countries taking part in the Up2U project. Since network availability is the key to the Always-on education concept, neither formal nor informal learning scenarios could benefit from the limitation of eduroam access to some particular location types such as campuses, museums, libraries, labs, public places. Thus students and teachers should have the capability of using eduroam wherever it is available.
Analysis has proven that availability of eduroam in the neighbourhood of the pilot schools is very high. In 37% of cases, it is possible to find eduroam access within walking distance from the school (less than 1 km). Most of the pilot schools (65%) are located less than 5 km from the closest eduroam location.
An average number of eduroam location available within 20 km from the pilot school varies from country to country and can reach up to 63.25 locations.
Detailed information on eduroam availability in the neighbourhood of the pilot schools can be found in Appendix A. Eduroam near schools - details.
Pilot schools, as well as eduroam availability in their neighbourhood, are depicted in the interactive map below.