The eduTEAMS Discovery Service (Disco) allows services to implement an (embedded) identity provider discovery.
This section contains functional and technical documentation on how to use the discovery service if you are a administrator of a service.
The discovery service is not yet available for public use, it will be included in the 1.1. release of eduTEAMS (scheduled at Okt 31, 2017)
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.
In the following we describe one particular Discovery Service for eduGAIN, the eduTEAMS Discovery Service.
eduTEAMS Discovery Service
The eduTEAMS Discovery service is one of several service components that form the GÉANT eduTEAMS service. Even though the name implies it, the eduTEAMS Discovery Service is not limited to be used by eduTEAMS services but in fact can be used by all eduGAIN Service Providers.
Benefits of the eduTEAMS Discovery Service
- Modern SAML2-compliant Discovery Service implementation
- Hosted in a high availability infrastructure of 3 or more nodes
- Available to all eduGAIN Service Providers for free
- Very simple to integrate into a SP web page thanks to embedded Discovery Service Javascript
- Support for many languages
- Allows custom-tailoring list of IdPs based on SAML entity categories or with black/white listing individual IdPs.
Target User of eduTEAMS Discovery Service
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
- How to use Discovery Service, instructions for end users.