SAML2 based federations consist of services represented by Service Providers (SP) and Home Organizations represented by Identity Providers (IdP). Services rely on Home Organizations to identify the users and for that to happen, the services usually need to be able to direct the user to correct Home Organization. The number of Home Organizations is - particularly in eduGAIN - so vast that users potentially have to select their Home Organization from a long list of organizations which can access a particular service. Showing this (long) list of Home Organizations requires a so-called Identity Provider Discovery Service. Instead of operating a Discovery Service itself, a service operator can rely on a central Discovery Service, which is operated by a third party. A centrally maintained Discovery Service offers users a list of Home Organizations to pick from.
Benefits of the eduTEAMS Discovery Service
- Modern SAML2-compliant Discovery Service implementation
- Hosted in a high availability infrastructure of 3 or more nodes
- Very simple to integrate into a SP web page thanks to embedded Discovery Service Javascript
- Very non-intrusive
- Support for many languages
- Allows custom-tailoring list of IdPs based on SAML entity categories or with black/white listing individual IdPs.
Target Users
The eduTEAMS Discovery Service is a centrally maintained Discovery Service intended to be used by eduTEAMS services in particular, and all eduGAIN services in general as its usage is not restricted.
Origins
The eduTEAMS Discovery Service is based on the CESNET Discovery Service implementation, which has been operational since 2012. CESNET operates the service for eduTEAMS on behalf of GÉANT.
Instructions on how to use the eduTEAMS Discovery Service
- How to setup a Service Provider to make use of the eduTEAMS Discovery Service
- Information for Identity Providers on how an IdP is shown in the Discovery Service and what data is used to present it