The Federation Gateways

The JISC has funded the development of the Federations Gateways by Eduserv to support inter-working between Shibboleth and Athens sites and service providers. The JISC will also continue funding the Athens service until July 2008 (see JISC Core Middleware Development Programmes).

Eduserv has been working on the development of the Federation Gateways for nearly two years now (please refer to the Federation Gateways Overview).

In short, the gateways enable Athens users to access Shibboleth based resources easily (in the same way they can access Athens protected resources). Conversely, Shibboleth authenticated users are able to access Athens protected resources.

The Shibboleth to Athens Gateway was released in May 2005 (see our News page) and allows OpenAthens subscribers that use SAML technology to appear in the Athens federation and access Athens protected resources.

The Athens to Shibboleth Gateway was launched on 15 November 2006 (News page) and allows OpenAthens subscribers to appear in Shibboleth federations without the need to implement Shibboleth themselves.

Integration guides for the two Gateways are available below:

• Athens to Shibboleth integration guide
• Shibboleth to Athens integration guide