eduGAIN

The eduGAIN interfederation service delivers a platform for the trustworthy exchange of metadata through the coordination of technical infrastructure and policy. This supports the needs of federations in establishing a common baseline for metadata interoperability and furthers the goals of federations to operate in a global identity access and service exchange. 

eduGAIN enables federations to exchange service information in a cooperative trust model. Each service offering is delegated to federations and they are able to decide whether this service meets the technical standards of their federation (while a baseline is defined, some federations have more detailed technical requirements). The service’s technical website makes this information available in a transparent manner. The federation certification process requires technical compliance with the Metadata Profile of the eduGAIN Policy Framework. This is achieved through a metadata validation tool allowing federations to monitor their own progress and the progress of other participants.

The eduGAIN interfederation service is deployed using the MDS SAML Aggregator Tool. The aggregation of SAML metadata from member federations is equivalent to compiling a global phonebook of service providers and institutional identity providers that wish to participate in an interfederated environment. The aggregation tool ensures that the information supplied by each federation passes the technical requirements of the interfederation service. Requirements that cannot be programmatically determined are defined in practice statements and reviewed by the eduGAIN Steering Group.

The eduGAIN interfederation service consists of two main elements:

• eduGAIN Policy Framework.
• Metadata Distribution Service (MDS).

The eduGAIN Policy Framework details the administrative and technical standards that all participant federations must adhere to in order to enable the trustworthy exchange of service information to support identity, authentication and authorisation between partner federations.

The Metadata Distribution Service (MDS) is the instantiation of the Metadata Profile offering the aggregation of compliant metadata between participant federations.

KPIs