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What is eduroam?

eduroam (education roaming) is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community. eduroam allows students, researchers and staff from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity across campus and when visiting other participating institutions by simply opening their laptop.

This means that wherever you go in the world, you will be able to login to an eduroam wireless network with your Nelson Mandela University credentials. You will then have basic Internet access provided by the institution that you are visiting without any additional configuration required on your wireless device. You will also be able to establish a VPN connection back to Nelson Mandela University to access Nelson Mandela University resources.

More information on eduroam can be found at http://www.eduroam.org/.

It is very important to note that all the letters in the word eduroam should always be in lower case. This is the eduroam standard, and allows for an eduroam wireless profile to be saved once on your wireless device for ease of use.

Whenever you connect to an eduroam wireless network, you will be prompted for a username and a password. The format of your username will look as follows:

<username>@mandela.ac.za, where <username> is the name that you use to login on your PC at Nelson Mandela University. The password is exactly the same password as the one that you use to login on your PC at Nelson Mandela University. You may be required to enter your credentials up to three (3) times depending on the security services enabled on your mobile device.

Some devices may report an untrusted certificate when you connect to this network. This is expected behaviour, and can be ignored.


Some PCs may experience problems with the server certificates required for authentication. This will typically result in complete failure to connect to the wireless networks. A work-around for this can be found by manually creating a wireless network profile, and disabling certificate validation. The steps for doing this can be found here (Windows 7 only).

ICT Services will provide a method for Nelson Mandela University staff members to create guest accounts for visiting professionals. This will be an online procedure through which the Nelson Mandela University staff member creating the guest account accepts full responsibility for the account that is being created. More information on this will be communicated as soon as the service is up and running.

We trust that this will make accessing the Nelson Mandela University wireless network easier and simpler to use.