All participating member federations in eduGAIN will produce and consume SAML metadata for and from eduGAIN. In particular, this metadata flow works like this:

• IdP/SP operator from a federation
  • decides to opt-in for eduGAIN
• Federation operator resp. federation metadata registry
  • adds the entity's metadata to the upstream federation metadata (1)
• eduGAIN MDS
  • aggregates & validates upstream metadata delivered by the participating federations.
  • Then signs and republishes the gathered metadata for consumption by the member federations (2)
  • Individual SPs and IdPs should not consume the eduGAIN metadata directly. It is rather recommended that they consume the eduGAIN/interfederation metadata offered by their local federation.
• Federation metadata registry
  • consumes the eduGAIN downstream metadata - click here for an example implementation
  • Removes entities already registered with local federation
• IdP/SP operator
  • ensures that the entity consumes the interfederation metadata (re)distributed by the local federation (3)