FAQ

What is the NZ Federation?

The NZ Federation is an identity and access federation, and provides a legal structure within which a group of organisations share a set of agreed policies and rules for access to online resources. The federation?s policies and rules enable federation members to establish trust and shared understanding of language or terminology. The inter-institutional trusts enable people to use their home credentials to connect to remote sites without revealing their credentials (pseudonimity) or releasing unnecessary private information.

What is Tuakiri?

Tuakiri is the Maori word for "identity" and the name of the New Zealand Access Federation for research and education.

When will the NZ federation be up and running?

Who can join?

At the moment, there are two primary categories of federation participation in the NZ federation: Research and Higher Education Institutions, and Service Providers. To learn more about the eligibility criteria and the processes for joining, visit our Joining Process page.

How much will it cost?

TBA

What services can I access?

TBA

How does Shibboleth integrate with my existing technology?

Shibboleth can be run on the majority of widely deployed operating systems, e.g. Windows, Unix variants, Apple Mac.

How does Shibboleth integrate with my existing identity management (directory services)?

Shibboleth integrates with most directory services that support LDAP, including Microsoft Active Directory Services.

Who else is participating?

Membership of the NZ federation continues to grow. For a current list of federation members, please see the member list.

Why should I join?

By joining the federation you will be able to take advantage of the following:

• Reduces the number of credentials (e.g. username and password) that users have to remember, and the associated administrative overheads
• Helps to protect the privacy of the end user
• Standard approach to access management across NZ higher education and research, and beyond
• Based on an international standard (SAML)

What is required to join?

Organizations applying to join the NZ Federation must agree at an executive level of their organisation to the terms and conditions of federation participation. There are also technical requirements. See the Joining Process page.

What are the consequences of joining the Australian Federation (AAF) while the NZ Federation is starting up?

At this moment the NZ federation is in its early stages and starting up. The expectation is that members will be able to use the NZ federation infrastructure by Q2/Q3 2011. Until that time, we advise organisations to join the Australian Access Federation (AAF).

For 2010, joining the AAF is free, as all fees are waived for the 2010 calendar year. From 1 January 2011 the AAF requests a one-time joining fee and annual member subscription fee from each institution. See the AAF Subscription Fees for 2011 for more information on fees. Note that because of the one-time joining fee that is waived in 2010, it is cheaper to join the AAF in 2010 than in 2011.

Once joined, to maintain access to the services provided via the AAF, we advise organisations to stay member of the AAF until con-federation is set-up. Con-federation is the linking of one or more federations (in this case the NZ Federation and AAF) so people from an IdP in one federation can use services in the other federation. We will strive to have one fee only for the combined membership of the NZ Federation and the AAF until con-federation is established.

The NZ Federation will provide support for organisations with moving from the AAF to the NZ Federation, when the NZ Federation is up and running. The aim is to let the NZ Federation mirror the AAF as much as possible, to limit this impact. 

What is the difference between eduRoam and Shibboleth/NZ Federation?

eduRoam and Shibboleth are complementary technologies that provide solutions to two different objectives. eduRoam provides federated authentication for access to infrastructure services such as wireless network access and basic host-based services (i.e. non web-based services). Once network access has been achieved, Shibboleth, the technology behind the NZ Federation, facilitates federated admission to web-based services (such as journals and media content) that are subject to access control, through a central authentication and authorisation infrastructure.

The NZ Federation is currently deploying a federated authentication environment for web-based applications, based on Shibboleth technology. It will provide a richer set of attributes about users, so that application operators can make finer decisions as to which users can access what services and resources. By contrast, eduRoam is a mature federated authentication system, based on Radius technology. It provides a more basic set of attributes about users, and hence is more suitable for more broadly based common infrastructure and host-based services.

Organisations would implement eduRoam to enable their staff to log in to wi-fi services with their notebooks when visiting other NZ or overseas organisations that support eduRoam. Once they gain access to the internet with eduRoam they will still need to login to websites they visit such as their own institution's webmail service or other web-services whose log-in uses an NZ Federation identity. Organisations would join the NZ Federation to give their staff access from wherever they are to on-line services offered through the NZ Federation, such as HPC or storage resources, DSpace document respository, and project wiki spaces.

Staff of an institution supporting both eduRoam and  the NZ Federation can use exactly the same username and password pair for both systems.