Metadata

ACOnet publishes several SAML 2.0 Metadata documents, some of which are documented below.

Production

Service Providers only providing services to ACOnet participants can use this limited Metadata document, which only contains entities registered with ACOnet (i.e., those accounted for by formal ACOnet Identity Federation members who are bound by the ACOnet Identity Federation Policy):

Federation members who should use this limited Metadata document:

• Service Providers registering individually with every Identity Federation, such as internationally acting e-resource providers
• Service Providers which (by the "nature" of their service; e.g. target market or legal status) are limited to subjects from eduID.at member institutions.

All other Federation members will want to make use of the Interfederation-enabled Metadata document, which contains all eduID.at member institutions as well as any SAML entities known via Interfederation agreements, such as eduGAIN. Those interfederated entities are bound by the policies of their respective Registrars or Home Federations.

Federation members who should use this Metadata document include:

• Service Providers registered with ACOnet also offering their services via Interfederation, as well as
• All Identity Providers registered with ACOnet, including but not limited to those participating in Interfederation.
  (Only SPs will be relevant to an IDP and communication with SPs is best managed via attribute release policies, not metadata exclusion.)

Preview

From time to time the eduID.at Operations Team may provide "preview" metadata feeds that allow eduID.at members to test whether they can safely/successfully load what will become the next production metadata feed(s) at some point.

This only happens for significant and potentially disruptive technology changes and the respective metadata feeds should only be used by interested parties (to determine their own continued ability to load eduID.at metadata) or when advised by the eduID.at Operations Team.

Metadata URLs and their respective semantics and usage are identical to the "production" metadata feed URLs with the exception of the additional "/preview" path component in the URL.

Metadata validity and refresh

Currently eduID.at Metadata is being signed daily (or more often) and validity (validUntil) is being set to +14 days in the future each time. That means consumers of this metadata will need to refresh (download and evaluate signature) eduID.at metadata at least every 14 days, which a correctly configured software should do automatically. (Note that this validity window may be shortened further in the future without prior notice.)

Consumers of eduID.at Metadata, i.e., SAML IDPs and SPs (and potentially SAML IDP Discovery Services) should refresh eduID.at metadata at least once a day, but may do so more often. The example Metadata Providers in this documentation are set to a 4-hour refresh (i.e., re-downloading and evaluating the eduID.at SAML metadata 6 times a day – or less often if it can be established that the metadata hasn't changed on the HTTP layer, cf. conditional HTTP GET), shortening the time it takes for the software to learn of new, changed or removed entities.

The example Metadata Filters in this set of documentation are using a maximum validity of 28 days, i.e., software configured that way would reject SAML metadata that (a) does not have any upper limit in its validity, and (b) where validity exceeds 28 days in the future. This allows metadata consumers to protect themselfs from overly large "windows of opportunity".