MAREN goes eduroam

Better late than never!

This seems to be a fitting phrase for the Malawi Research and Education Network (MAREN) after the network successfully tested its eduroam service in June 2016 to become the fifth NREN within the UbuntuNet Alliance membership region to launch the service after KENET, TENET, ZAMREN and RENU.

eduroam is a service that allows users from participating institutions to gain secure access to wireless network using their standard username (email format)/ and password credentials as they do at their home institution for wireless access.

It is based on a federated authentication model where user usernames and passwords are validated at their home institution and enables access to authorized network services that are controlled by the visited institution.

MAREN successfully tested its eduroam service outside Malawi last month when UbuntuNet Alliance officials who were attending TNC 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic were able to connect to the Internet using the MAREN eduroam credentials.

The launch of the service comes as MAREN is gearing up to connect to the UbuntuNet network later this year.