Technical reasons for discontinuation of central-wpa

Since Nov-2008, central-wpa has been absolutely identical to the eduroam service provided by the University of Edinburgh.
It has not been mentioned in any official Information Services configuration documentation for over a year.

JANET (UK), the UK's Education and Research Network have produced guidance on moving to a single 'eduroam' SSID production network.
This can be found at http://www.ja.net/services/authentication-and-authorisation/janet-roaming/documents/eduroam-ssid-pid.pdf

It lists the advantages as

Less noise/pollution of Wi-Fi RF space (fewer BSSIDs).
Single point configuration. Users correctly configured for their own institution (and adding their realm name) will connect at other organisations straight away.
Fewer SSIDs in supplicant - less confusion for the user.
Fewer BSSIDs - less traffic to wake clients and better battery lifetime

It also describes the risks (network team comment in brackets).

Users being unable to access wireless network due to old hardware.
(This is not applicable as all users who can connect to central-wpa will be able to connect to eduroam.)
Windows 7 Desktop/Laptop service users being unable to access eduroam at other organisations due to mismatches in configuration.
(This is not applicable to this proposal as central-wpa is not supported at other organisations).
Users not being aware of the changes occurring and not reconfiguring their device for the changeover.
(We intend to widely advertise the proposal).
Organisational resistance to dropping the 'brandname' SSID.
(This is not applicable as the central-wpa SSID does not incorporate the University of Edinburgh name).

The Information Services Network Team

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