Upgrade To A Higher Testbed Federation Level

MAMS will deploy three levels of Federation membership by the end of 2006. Currently only Level 1 and Level 2 have been deployed; Level 3 Federation will be activated once the legal framework has been established.

• Level 1: Setup for testing and demonstration purposes. An IdP should not be trusted to assert anything truthfully about its users, nor should the SP be trusted to offer any valuable services. Any organization or individual can join Level 1 as an IdP either by using the MAMS Easy Install CD, or register and enter the details of their Shibboleth IdP that they have manually installed. Joining as an SP can only be done manually as there is yet no MAMS Easy Install CD for the SP. A Level 1 Certificate Authority has been setup as a quick and cheap method for issuing certificates needed by Shibboleth for entities in this Testbed Federation level. As a member of Level 1, you can easily upgrade themselves to the next level, by logging in to the Federation Management site using the password that was mailed to them earlier. Once inside, you can edit the IdP or SP and request that it be upgraded to a different level. Once your request, subjected to verification, has been approved, the details of your IdP and/or SP will be published in the metadata that is distributed to members belonging to higher Testbed Federation levels.
• Level 2: Membership in Level 2 means that an insitution wishes to offer actual services and/or act as an IdP to actual members within their organization. Due to the higher security requirements, manual verification of the organization wishing to join needs to be made. Furthermore, the sites would need proper commercial ceritifcates; certficates issued by Level 1 CA would not be accepted. An organization can request to join Level 2 by login in and modify their IdP and/or SP details. A member of the MAMS Testbed Federation administrators will then contact you to verify your details and check that all requirements have been met. Once approved, their details will be published in the Level 2 metadata.
• Level 3: From a technical point of view, it is identical to Level 2. Additionally, there will be a legal agreement binding the parties to the Federation (similar to InCommon^?? in the US).

-- ChiNguyen - 03 Aug 2006
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