The eduroam initiative started in 2003 within TERENA's Task Force on Mobility, TF-Mobility. The task force created a test bed to demonstrate the feasibility of combining a RADIUS-based infrastructure with 802.1X standard technology to provide roaming network access across research and education networks. The initial test was conducted among five institutions located in the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, Croatia and the UK. Later, other national research and education networking organisations in Europe embraced the idea and gradually started joining the infrastructure, which was then named eduroam.

eduroam allows any eduroam-enabled user to get network access at any institution connected to eduroam. Depending on local policies at the visited institutions, eduroam participants may also have additional resources (for example printers) at their disposal. 

Today eduroam is a federation of federations (confederation); single federations are run at national level and they are all connected to a regional confederation.