I have found that the definition of "visitor" or "guest" differs for many of in higher ed. It's interesting, and I'm not arguing that anyone is right or wrong in any way as we all define our local requirements (or have them defined by our senior management).
Years ago we were hit with a fair amount of "What if a student's parents are visiting? Or "What if a visiting faculty member or lecturer comes on campus after hours and needs no-notice access?" type questions. This led us to the notion of allowing visitors to self-sponsor with a real phone number (accountability) and remove the dependency for "approval". Stay too long though, and you are no longer a guest- you need to get a real Network ID and be sponsored by someone. At the same time, I see the wisdom or roots of everybody else's methods, and can say with certainty that over time we pretty much considered (or actually used) almost every option discussed through these posts. -Lee Badman -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Frans Panken Sent: Friday, January 17, 2014 1:54 PM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Guest Network Access Policy I work for an NREN that connect educations to one another and to the internet. We received questions from institutions who want to offer non-educational guests access to their network. They use eduroam. We are in favor of minimizing the number of SSIDs. We recently started with experimenting a service that allows guests to make use of the eduroam SSID. Institutions can request guest accounts with us. These guest accounts use our Radius server to authenticate. We only grant user accounts to the R&E community. Alternatively, users can SMS a secret code to a dedicated number and they receive the username and password on their smartphone, via SMS. (The advantage is that we have their phone number and hence can find out who they are if something happens on the network. The contact person is informed of the request via e-mail. A conformation before the usernames and password is granted is optional) The institutions remain liable for the behavior of their guests on the network. All guest accounts have a limited duration. Bottom-line: a very similar policy as David described, but no extra SSIDs or other Wi-Fi resources or maintenance is needed to support guests. We have limited experience with the execution of the service, though. -Frans On 1/16/14 10:55 PM, Alexander, David wrote: > We have had a policy in place for several years requiring guests to be > sponsored by an employee in order to use our wireless network. There > are two types of sponsorship - short term (5 days) and long term (30 > days). In addition, sponsored guests must register their network > devices via MAC address registration to gain access to the network. > > > > Our guest wireless implementation has caused some issues with public > areas like our student center and event spaces which host groups of > people who require network access, and the identity of the guests isn't > always known in advance. > > > > I wanted to know about guest network access policy at other schools, and > I'd appreciate your feedback on the following questions: > > > > 1) Do you allow guests on your wireless network? > > a. If you allow guests, what steps do they need to take to gain > access to the network (eg. sponsorship, MAC registration, open network)? > > b. If you require sponsorship or device registration, can you > explain the process or give me a pointer to your policy? > > 2) Is your wireless network completely open in any part of your > campus (eg. Library, student center, event spaces, athletic fields, etc.)? > > > > > > Thanks, > > Dave > > > > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE > Constituent Group discussion list can be found at > http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
