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eduGAIN interconnects identity federations around the world, simplifying access to content, services and resources for the global research and education community. eduGAIN enables the trustworthy exchange of information related to identity, authentication and authorisation (AAI) by coordinating elements of the federations’ technical infrastructure and providing a policy framework that controls this information exchange.

This exchange of information contributes to the seamless operation of services, whether they are developed within the GÉANT Project, provided by other communities represented by, or associated with, the GÉANT partners, or provided by commercial Service Providers.

eduGAIN enables different AAIs to interact securely. The eduGAIN technology involves a "Metadata Service", which regularly retrieves and aggregates information from participating federations about services and identity providers, and makes this information available.

eduGAIN coordinates necessary elements of the federations’ technical infrastructure and provides a policy framework controlling the exchange of this information.

eduGAIN also liaises with other federation initiatives such as REFEDS (Research and Education Federations) and the GÉANT project's Federation-as-a-Service team.​

Benefits:

• Enables trustworthy exchange of information between federations without many bilateral agreements.
• Reduces the costs of developing and operating services.
• Improves the security and end-user experience of services.
• Enables service providers to greatly expand their user base.
• Enables identity providers to increase the number of services available to their users.

Learn how does eduGAIN work!

National Identity Federations run and led by National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) may be part of many international initiatives, which increases the range of services available to its members.

eduGAIN is a service that gathers identity management federations that are partners of GÉANT (Pan-European Research Network). This organization is manager of a high capacity network that includes more than three thousand educational and research institutions in 32 countries through 28 national and regional networks of education and research.

MAGIC aims to foster the deployment of the platforms that enable mobility of people and seamless access to services by promoting the establishment of identity federations interconnected via eduGAIN.

Specific objectives are:

• To provide technical knowledge and policy requirements to integrate new federations and European federations.
• To provide technical knowledge to create interoperability and interoperation with new federations.

Why do Identity Federations need to be interconnected?

The existence of multiple AAIs and multiple identity federations makes it technically and administratively difficult when a user attempts to gain access to protected resources and services from other federations. The user must first be successfully authenticated by his/her home AAI and then authorised by the visited service provider. This is a problem that is tackled and solved by eduGAIN.