US Federations Discussion

["Ma, Ying" <>]

Hi Ann, 

Do you know if there is a mailing list from Internet2 Middleware
Initiative where most of the interfed discussion occurs?

WAYF seems to be more involved in Kalmar than eduGAIN. I assume none of
them has gotten far enough to include US InCommon yet.

Thanks,
Ying

On 5/16/12 9:56 AM, "Ann West" 
<>
 wrote:

>
>Hi Ying,
>
>We don't have an interfed working group per se, but are actively involved
>in interfed from the Internet2 Middleware Initiative in addition to
>InCommon. MACE-Dir, for example, provides the care and feeding of
>eduPerson, which is now used internationaly.
>
>InCommon does participate in REFEDS with other federation operators.
>Interfederation is being actively explored and as you know there are
>examples out there in the UK, Kalmar Union in the Nordic countries,
>eduGAIN in Europe, among others. I noticed that the Danish federation is
>not a member of eduGAIN, the most likely interfed activity.
>
>I wonder if you can federate with them directly under an informal
>bi-lateral agreement with separate metadata for now?
>
>Ann
>
>-- 
>Ann West
>Assistant Director,
>Assurance and Community
>Internet2/InCommon/Michigan Tech
>
>office: +1.906.487.1726
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>> Hi Tom,
>> 
>> Thank you for your reply. It's good to know where we are. I'm aware
>> that InCommon is one of the participants in REFEDS, which focuses on
>> topics involved in international collaboration in research and
>> education. Interfederation seems to be one of the topics. We are
>> interested to know if InCommon is actively involved  in REFEDS
>> effort, and whether there is a workgroup focused in this area. Any
>> information helps.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Ying
>> ______________________________________
>> From: Tom Scavo 
>> []
>> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2012 3:20 PM
>> To: Ma, Ying
>> Cc: 
>> 
>> Subject: Re: [USFeds] suggestion on inter-federational SSO?
>> 
>> Hi Ying,
>> 
>> > We have a case where a professor at University of Southern Denmark
>> > (SDU) would like his students to access a Moodle application
>> > provided at UCLA. The Moodle application is an InCommon SP. A
>> > little
>> > research led me to believe that SDU is a member of Danish
>> > e-identity
>> > federation WAYF. WAYF is a SAML 2 federation that supports some
>> > eduPerson attributes including eduPersonPrincialName. I wonder if
>> > anyone out there knows about any possible solution of
>> > inter-federational SSO that might allow user from a WAYF IDP to
>> > access an InCommon SP.
>> 
>> This is a very reasonable request. However, there is no easy way to
>> accomplish this. Currently there is no interfederation agreement
>> between InCommon and WAYF.
>> 
>> > If this scenario is currently not practical,
>> > would bi-lateral integration (metadata exchange) with WAFY or SDU
>> > IdP be reasonable alternatives?
>> 
>> Yes, that is always a possibility. Of course all it takes is a few
>> repetitions of this exercise and we're back to square one, that is,
>> how do we interfederate in general.
>> 
>> > Any other practices that address similar use cases?
>> 
>> I've heard of a number of similar use cases but as of yet there is no
>> general solution to this problem.
>> 
>> Hope this helps,
>> 
>> Tom Scavo
>> Operations Manager
>> InCommon.org
>> https://twitter.com/trscavo