SWITCHconnect comes in three different flavours that were developed over the years. It started originally with what we today denote as the 'classic' service, enabling roaming between Swiss universities. This was later extended with the PWLAN service, extending the hotspot footprint with commercial hotspots within Switzerland.
Independent of these services, the eduroam initiative started in 2003 within TERENA's Task Force on Mobility, enabling international roaming between universities.
In the table below you can see a quick comparison between the three services. Detailed descriptions of each can be found on the respective subsite to the right.
| eduroam | PWLAN | classic | |
| availability | worldwide | Switzerland | Switzerland |
| hotspot locations | universities | public places | universities |
| technology | RADIUS | VPN | VPN |
| traffic routing | direct | via home university | via home university |