eduGAIN is an international interfederation service interconnecting research and education identity federations. It enables the secure exchange of information related to identity, authentication and authorization between participating federations. The service is managed by a team led by

TERENA The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA, ) was a not-for-profit association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The association was originally f ...

. eduGAIN® is a registered trademark of

DANTE Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His '' Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ...

Service description

The eduGAIN service enables participating federations, which primarily serve the authentication and authorisation interests of research and education sectors, to interfederate. eduGAIN provides an infrastructure for establishing trusted communications between

identity provider An identity provider (abbreviated IdP or IDP) is a system entity that creates, maintains, and manages identity information for principals and also provides authentication services to relying applications within a federation or distributed network. ...

s and

service providers A service provider (SP) is an organization that provides services, such as consulting, legal, real estate, communications, storage, and processing services, to other organizations. Although a service provider can be a sub-unit of the organization t ...

in different participating federations. End-users authenticate at identity providers and obtain access to service providers. Technically, eduGAIN is managed by aggregating and distributing signed SAML 2.0 metadata files. To join eduGAIN, the parent organisation of a federation must sign the eduGAIN policy declaration and submit it to the

Secretariat for the attention of the eduGAIN Operations Team. The Operations Team deals with daily technical issues in the eduGAIN service provision, receives enquiries about eduGAIN and forwards them to the appropriate body, receives and processes applications from federations to join the service, prepares and publishes a federation operational practice statement for the eduGAIN interfederation service, and prepares an audit plan for the eduGAIN operational practices on the request of the eduGAIN Steering Group.

History

The eduGAIN initiative started as a research activity in the project GN2 (2004-2009) co-funded by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

, which also provided the funding for the

GÉANT GÉANT is the pan-European data network for the research and education community. It interconnects national research and education networks (NRENs) across Europe, enabling collaboration on projects ranging from biological science, to earth obs ...

network. The eduGAIN service activity that was started in the successor project GN3 (2009-2013), built upon the eduGAIN that was developed in the GN2 project, but was different. On 1 April 2011, eduGAIN became an operational service. In 2012, the eduGAIN service started to reach beyond Europe with the Canadian and Brazilian federations joining the service. In the same year

took up the leadership of the eduGAIN service activity. From April 2013, funding of the service was continued as part of the GN3plus project.

Governance

The eduGAIN Steering Group consists of one representative and one deputy representative of each of the federations participating in the service. The Steering Group approves the profiles and documents in the eduGAIN policy framework and their updates, decides about peering relationships, approves the participation of new federations, decides about the disqualification or temporary suspension of participating federations in case of violation of the policy framework, accepts or amends the plan for audits of eduGAIN operations, appoints the Steering Group chair and non-voting invited observers to the Steering Group, and appoints the Operational Team. Certain decisions of the Steering Group need to be ratified by the eduGAIN Executive Committee, namely changes to the eduGAIN policy framework constitution, the adoption of new technical profiles and other documents in the policy framework that may exclude participating federations from participation in the eduGAIN service, and the approval of major updates to the profiles and documents in the eduGAIN policy framework that are likely to affect any participating federation’s participation in the eduGAIN service. The role of the eduGAIN Executive Committee has been entrusted to the Executive Board of the GN3plus project (April 2013 - March 2015).

Geographical deployment

Thirty national research and education federations have been officially admitted as participants in eduGAIN. The corresponding countries are listed below, with the name of their federation and its parent organisation.

Europe

* Albania - ALBANIAN ACADEMIC NETWORK (RASH) * Austria - ACOnet Identity Federation (

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...

ACOnet ACOnet is the name of the national research and education network in Austria. The ACONET association promotes the development and use of that network. ACOnet is not managed and operated by ACONET, but by a unit in the Computing Centre of the Unive ...

) * Belgium - Belnet R&E Federation (

Belnet Belnet (the Belgian National research and education network) is a Belgian internet provider for educational institutions, research centres, scientific institutes and government services. Since 1993, BELNET provides web services to higher educati ...

) * Croatia - AAI@EduHr ( University of Zagreb - University Computing Centre) * Czech Republic - eduID.cz (

CESNET CESNET (Czech Education and Scientific NETwork) is developer and operator of national e-infrastructure for science, research, development and education in Czech Republic. The CESNET association was founded in 1996 by Czech public universities and ...

) * Denmark - ''Where Are You From'' WAYF (DeIC) * Estonia - ''Eesti haridus- ja teadusasutustevahelise autentimise ja autoriseerimise taristu'' TAAT (

EENet Estonian Education and Research Network (EENet) is a structural unit of the Information Technology Foundation for Education (HITSA) whose main goal is to ensure the development and stable functioning of the information technology infrastructure n ...

) * Finland - Haka Federation ( CSC) * France - Fédération Éducation-Recherche ( RENATER) * Germany - DFN-AAI ( DFN) * Greece - GRNET Federation

Authentication and authorization infrastructure Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicati ...

(

GRNET The Greek Research and Technology Network or GRNET ( el, Εθνικό Δίκτυο Υποδομών Τεχνολογίας και Έρευνας, ΕΔΥΤΕ) is the national research and education network of Greece. GRNET S.A. gives internet co ...

) * Hungary - eduID.hu ( NIIFI) * Ireland - Edugate (

HEAnet HEAnet is the national education and research network of Ireland. HEAnet's e-infrastructure services support approximately 210,000 students and staff (third-level) in Ireland, and approximately 800,000 students and staff (first and second-lev ...

) * Italy - IDEM GARR AAI (

GARR GARR (''Gruppo per l'Armonizzazione delle Reti della Ricerca'') is the Italian national computer network for universities and research. The main objective of GARR is to design and manage a very high-performance network infrastructure that delive ...

) * Latvia - ''Latvian Academic Identity Federation'' LAIFE (LAIFE) * Lithuania - ''Litnet FEDI'' (

Litnet LITNET is Lithuanian Research and Education Network in Lithuania. It was established in 1991 and had X.25 satellite connectivity to University of Oslo. LITNET NOC A network on a chip or network-on-chip (NoC or )This article uses the convent ...

) * Moldova, Republic of - ''LEAF'' ( RENAM) * Netherlands - SURFconext (

SURFnet SURF is an organization that develops, implements and maintains the national research and education network (NREN) of the Netherlands, It operates the national research network formally called SURFnet. SURF as a network is a backbone computer netw ...

) * Norway - ''Felles Elektronisk Identitet'' Feide ( UNINETT) * Poland - ''Polish Identity Federation'' PIONIER.Id ( PSNC) * Portugal - RCTSaai ( FCCN) * Slovenia - ArnesAAI (

ARNES Arnes may refer to: * ARNES, Academic and Research Network of Slovenia * Arnes, Manitoba, Canada ** Arnes Airport, located northeast of Arnes, Manitoba, Canada * Arnes, Terra Alta, a town in Catalonia, Spain * Årnes, the administrative centr ...

) * Spain - ''Servidor de Identidad de RedIRIS'' SIR (

RedIRIS {{Short description, National research and education network for Spain RedIRIS is the national research and education network (NREN) for Spain. It is part of Red.es, which also administers and oversees the .es national Top-level domain. Most Spanis ...

) * Sweden - ''Swedish Academic Identity'' SWAMID (

SUNET SUNET is the Swedish University Computer Network. SUNET provides high-speed Internet access to academic institutions in Sweden. The current incarnation of the network, Sunet C, provides 100 Gbit/s links between the cities hosting universities. It r ...

) * Switzerland - SWITCHaai (

SWITCH In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type ...

) * Turkey - YETKİM ( ULAKBIM) * United Kingdom - UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research (

Janet Janet may refer to: Names * Janet (given name) * Janet (French singer) (1939–2011) Surname * Charles Janet (1849–1932), French engineer, inventor and biologist, known for the Left Step periodic table * Jules Janet (1861–1945), French psych ...

)

Asia-Pacific

* Australia - ''Australian Access Federation'' AAF (Australian Access Federation Inc.) * China Mainland -

CERNET The China Education and Research Network (CERNET; ) is the first nationwide education and research computer network in China. The CERNET project is funded by the Chinese government and directly managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is ...

Authentication and Resource Sharing Infrastructure (CARSI) * China Mainland - China Science & Technology Cloud * Hong Kong - Hong Kong Access Federation HKAF (Joint Universities Computer Centre Ltd.) * Japan - ''Japanese Academic Access Management Federation'' GakuNin (GakuNin) * Korea - ''Korean Access Federation'' KAFE (KAFE) * Malaysia - ''SIFULAN Malaysian Access Federation'' ( SIFULAN) * New Zealand - Tuakiri, New Zealand Access Federation (Tuakiri, New Zealand Access Federation, Inc.) * Oman - Oman Research and Education Network (OMREN)

North America

* Canada - Canadian Access Federation (

CANARIE CANARIE (formerly the Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education) is the not-for-profit organisation which operates the national backbone network of Canada's national research and education network (NREN). The org ...

) * USA - InCommon (

Internet2 Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government. The Internet2 consortium administrative headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, M ...

)

Latin America

* Brazil - ''Comunidade Acadêmica Federada'' CAFe ( RNP) * Chile - ''Comunidad Federada REUNA'' COFRe ( REUNA)

Africa

* South Africa - ''South African Identity Federation'' SAFIRE ( TENET)

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.edugain.org/ Academic computer network organizations Identity management Information technology organizations based in Europe