An open discussion list for topics related to the eduGAIN interfederation service.

[Nick Roy <nroy AT internet2.edu>]

Nick Roy

Director of Technology and Strategy, InCommon

Internet2, Denver (GMT -6:00)

On Aug 10, 2016, at 7:02 AM, Tom Scavo <trscavo AT internet2.edu> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 3:10 AM, Lukas Hämmerle
<lukas.haemmerle AT switch.ch> wrote:

On 09.08.16 20:35, Tom Scavo wrote:

- The phrase "Organisations/Identity Providers" is not relevant to
InCommon since orgs are allowed to have multiple IdPs. In any case,
the two are not equivalent. Historically, conflating the two has led
to widespread misuse of md:OrganizationDisplayName.

So far I have been only aware of the opposite situation where multiple
organisations have one IdP (is the case in some H&S federations).
Therefore, the organisations-IdP relationship is a tricky one in
general.

Indeed. The history of md:OrganizationDisplayName confirms that.

Do you have an idea of how many organisations in InCommon
operate several IdPs and how many such organisations operate?

Yes, this is documented on our (dynamic) org info page:

https://incommon.org/federation/info/all-orgs.html

One more bit of detail - when InCommon's Steward Program goes live (which has been discussed on the main REFEDS list), there will be orgs (regional network providers, at first) which can register IdPs for all of their "Represented Constituents" - in this case, K12 schools and community colleges.  So these orgs will be running and list possibly many IdPs for the schools in their networks.

Nick

I'm just
wondering why an organisation would invest the effort to operate
multiple IdPs (unless one is for test and one is for production)

I totally agree but that is a common use case worldwide. You can
browse this (dynamic) list of IdP DisplayNames to get a feel for how
many test IdPs there are in metadata:
https://spaces.internet2.edu/x/2IDmBQ

But I think I've (unintentionally) lured you into a rathole. All I'm
really asking for is:

s^Organisations/Identity Providers^Identity Providers^

Do you agree?

- Can you add a row of totals at the bottom?

What would you be most interested in? Just calculating the total would
be easy but in case you are interested in the total number of (unique)
IdPs in production federations, this would not be the total of the above
columns (some IdPs probably are in multiple federations).

Yes, I'm sure that's true but there can't be many such IdPs, right?
(that's a rhetorical question) In any case, I think a total would be
helpful. It gives an estimate of "all the IdPs in the world."

Thanks,

Tom