From Robin Walker (rdhw):

The existing Lapwing wi-fi access points in communal areas in Queens’ now also offer the “eduroam” wi-fi service. Most of the university has similar eduroam coverage.

The eduroam wi-fi service is an international exchange agreement between universities to permit each other’s members wi-fi access to the internet.

See http://www.eduroam.org/ and http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/wireless-lapwing/eduroam/

If you are satisfied with the current Lapwing wi-fi service, then you need not bother to find out more about eduroam: stop reading now.

The advantages that eduroam offers over Lapwing are:

1. eduroam works with many models of mobile phone etc that Lapwing does not work with (iPhone, iPod Touch, Nokia N-series, Blackberry, etc);

2. No need to log on via a web-browser: the laptop/phone automatically goes online as soon as it comes within range of an eduroam access point;

3. The eduroam wi-fi session is encrypted whereas the Lapwing wi-fi session is unencrypted and anybody can eavesdrop;

4. There is much less port-blocking in eduroam than in Lapwing, so that, for example, instant messengers will work in eduroam.

5. eduroam is available at many universities world-wide, available to you by virtue of your Cambridge membership, whereas Lapwing is a Cambridge-only solution.

The downside of eduroam is that the pre-configuration of your PC/phone necessary to enable it to recognise an eduroam connection is technologically challenging and not for the faint-hearted. The instructions are at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/wireless-lapwing/eduroam/localusers.html