(From SURFfederatie home page) SURFnet started on the construction of a federation in 2006. The SURFnet Federation will be offering researchers, students and lecturers access to information and services from various providers. This access will be offered on the basis of an account with the user's own organisation, such as with an educational institution. The SURFnet Federation will ensure that users can prove their identity by making use of data which this organisation, known as the Identity Provider (IdP), issues and manages for this purpose. The point of departure is the privacy of the user. It is therefore the task of the Identity Provider to determine the user's identity, and to issue it to the federation, in combination with a number of user characteristics, where appropriate.

In turn, the SURFnet Federation ensures that information and service providers trust the information regarding this identity. This prevents users having to remember multiple login names and access codes, and prevents the organisation having to maintain a large number of technical connections to information and service providers.

The SURFnet Federation offers possibilities to the information and service providers to perform access control up to the level of the individual end user, instead of IP-address-based access. This access control can be realised on the basis of the name of the organisation to which the user belongs, for example, or even on the basis of specific user characteristics.

With the objective of making cooperation between organisations within the target group of the SURFnet Federation and information and service providers as simple as possible, the SURFnet Federation offers a set of agreements (federation policies) and a technical infrastructure on the basis of which the federation is offered. This website provides information for end users, (future) federation members and information and service providers.

Members of JRA-5/eduGAIN.