Enabling Inter-institutional Authentication
Federations, groups of organizations that establish common practices and policies to build on authorization technologies such as Shibboleth®, are playing an increasingly prominent role in advanced networking plans around the world. Federations facilitate inter-institutional collaboration and transactions by providing a multi-lateral authorization framework, relieving individual member institutions of the need to establish multiple, bi-lateral agreements. In addition to InCommon®, established by Internet2 in the United States, federations in the countries such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Australia are either already in production or in the advanced planning stages.
Internet2 has supported the adoption of federated authorization capabilities by designing, implementing, and operating the non-production InQueue federation, which provides organizations an environment in which to test Shibboleth technology and federated authentication. Internet2 also worked closely with the Federal E-Authentication Initiative so that government web sites, such as the National Science Foundation's FastLane, may eventually use Shibboleth technology through InCommon.
In preparation for an international collaboration infrastructure with multiple federations, participants from around the world met in April 2004 to discuss how federations interact. Furthermore, the Shibboleth project team began work with online content providers such as Elsevier to determine how users will access online resources in a multi-federation environment.