Extended periods of a federation metadata unavailability result in the eduGAIN OT being swamped with automatic warning messages. To avoid that the technical participation suspension has been introduced.

If a federation feed is unavailable for an extended period of time (length to be decided but at least a month) due to either policy violations or metadata link unavailability, the federation is put into a technical suspension status under the provisions of section 3.6 of the eduGAIN Constitution (automatic suspension). 

• In the period proceeding suspension eduGAIN support will make effort to contact the federation representatives and try to resolve the problem.
• Federations which are in the technical suspension will be listed in a separate section of the members status page on the eduGAIN technical site. The reason for the suspension will be visible in the details window.
• For federations in the technical suspension no metadata pull would be done in particular no validation alerts would be sent until the status is changed by the OT. The status page would of course have the link to metadata validation, so that the federation is able to test its current feed before asking us to lift the suspension.
• To make sure that the federation is aware of the problem a weekly reminder would be sent automatically.
• The suspension will be lifted after the federation representative contacts eduGAIN support and informs about rectifying the problem. The OT will verify the metadata and if validation succeed will lift the suspension.
• The OT will inform the SG about cases of applying or lifting technical suspensions and will report on suspended federations on each SG meeting.

Suspension workflow

The eduGAIN OT will suspend the participation of an Identity Federation after one month (30 days) is passed from the expiration of the last valid upstream feed. On request of the Identity Federation, an additional one month of grace period could be granted before suspending the participation.

During the period of time ahead of the suspension the eduGAIN OT will continue to send automatic warning messages to the technical contact of the Identity Federation.

One week after the expiration of the last valid upstream feed, the eduGAIN Support will send the first suspension forewarn to inform the technical contacts of the Identity Federation that a failure in fixing the issue will lead to suspension.

After one week is passed with no effect from the first suspension forewarn, the eduGAIN Support will send the second suspension forewarn  to the delegate and the deputy of the Identity Federation. The second suspension forewarn will also be sent to the technical contacts of the Identity Federation and the eduGAIN Chair. At this point, the eduGAIN Secretariat will work with the GÉANT Partner Relations and International Relations team to identify appropriate NREN senior contacts to discuss the problems with.

After one week is passed with no effect from the second suspension forewarn, the eduGAIN Support Secretariat will send the third suspension forewarn to the management of the NREN or the Organisation to which the Identity Federation is affiliated with. The third suspension forewarn will also be sent to both the technical contacts and the delegate and the deputy of the Identity Federation and the eduGAIN Chair.

After one week is passed from the third suspension forewarn with no effect, or request of making use of the additional one month of grace period, the Identity Federation participation will be technically suspended.