Interfederation

[Ian Young <>]

On 25 Sep 2013, at 16:35, Tom Scavo 
<>
 wrote:

> So in the end, every entity in the UKf will consume the same (very
> large) metadata aggregate (with entity descriptors from arbitrary
> federations) regardless of whether or not they wish to interfederate?
> Even non-Shibboleth deployments (which are already metadata-deprived)?

Yes, that's the plan. One of the advantages of being one of the largest 
federations is that adding eduGAIN metadata is only about a 12% uplift in our 
aggregate size, so we don't expect anything to suddenly not be able to cope 
if it's coping today.

Obviously if there was any sign that every federation was about to dump 
everything they have into eduGAIN, there would be a legitimate concern that 
some people might need to buy more RAM. For various reasons, though, I don't 
see that happening any time soon. Even if every current eduGAIN participant 
did just go wild one afternoon I suspect we'd weather that kind of event 
better than anyone else.

If things did start to creak we might even want to start being selective 
about what we let through, or provide some kind of opt-out in the form of a 
"just my 1000 best friends" aggregate, but I'd rather start with a universal 
availability model and meet the challenges that will bring than start with 
everything being opt-in and then finding that we've all wasted our time 
because adoption is zero.

        -- Ian

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