On 7th January 2016, RENU was officially recognised as the 75th National Roaming Operator (NRO) for eduroam in the world. Since then, RENU members have gradually taken on the service to meet their wireless Internet connection needs, mostly on-campus.
Like its name suggests, eduroam is intended for “educational roaming”. At the time of its deployment by RENU, it was envisaged that students, researchers and lecturers are never stationed in one place. For example, lecturers tend to teach in different universities or at different campuses of the same university, students usually roam between different locations within and out of their institutions’ campuses, for example, libraries, classrooms, hostels and other assembly points. Likewise, researchers are never stationed in one place; they tend to move from place to place in search of information. With such movements, these groups usually have wireless network needs which are typically not easily attended to at their destinations. As an example, at a campus away from their home institution, roaming students and staff have to always look for someone (usually an IT personnel) to give them login details for the available WiFi, and even when this happens, it is hard work, plus one does not feel totally secure since these login details are usually shared with many other users.
