Canadian Access Federation (CAF)

The Canadian Access Federation (CAF) is the trust framework for managing digital identities in higher ed & research. We’re proud to be the national operator of CAF, connecting Canada’s students, researchers, and faculty to global collaborations and resources.

The universities, colleges, and research facilities that participate in CAF trust CANARIE to authenticate digital identities among research and education institutions and manage access to the eduroam Wi-Fi service and to academic applications, resources, and tools across Canada and around the world.

Research and education institutions that participate in CAF benefit from two services for their students and staff:

1 set of credentials = your passport to a world of academic & research resources.

Just as you can use your webmail, banking, or social media credentials to access other online services, CAF lets you use your credentials from your higher ed/research institution to securely access the eduroam Wi-Fi service and a world of academic resources, including:

  • scientific instrumentation
  • cloud computing
  • data storage
  • high performance computing centres
  • collaboration tools and portals
  • administrative systems
  • scholarly resources
  • teaching, learning, and research resources

The fundamental principle of the Canadian Access Federation (CAF) is trust.

If your higher ed/research institution participates in CAF, your login credentials are trusted by nearly 3,000 services and more than 10,000 eduroam Wi-Fi hotspots around the world.

How does this trust framework operate?

All participants in CAF sign an agreement (known as a “Trust Assertion Document”) that governs how they manage users’ personal information and access to their services. In turn, as the operator of CAF, CANARIE has a similar agreement in place with eduGAIN, the global service that interconnects more than 60 identity federations around the world and 5,000 participating institutions and service providers.

Learn how eduGAIN helps identity federations (like CAF) open a world of services to their students and faculty.

For Higher Education and Research Institutions

By participating in CAF and using Federated Identity Management (FIM), you can:

  • Quickly expand the range of services and research resources you make available to your students and faculty
  • Minimize the operational load of your IT team: With the single set of login credentials that you’ve created, your users can seamlessly access global apps, data sets, resources, and research communities across your campus, throughout Canada, and around the world
  • Comply with standards-based identity and access management (IAM) and security best practices

With eduroam, you can:

  • Give your students, researchers, and staff the gift of W-Fi access: your organization’s users can seamlessly connect to the eduroam network throughout your campus and at over 10,000 schools, teaching hospitals, libraries, research facilities, and other public sites around the world
  • Offer seamless Wi-Fi access to students, staff, and faculty visiting from other eduroam-enabled institutions, without the need to administer or support their access
  • Use eduroam Visitor Access (eVA) to eliminate the need for creating and managing guest Wi-Fi accounts for all other campus visitors

Participation Fees for Higher Education and Research Institutions

For academic institutions, fees are determined by your full-time equivalent (FTE) student count as published by Statistics Canada, (each full-time student = 1 FTE and each part-time student = 0.5 FTE). If your organization is not an academic institution, our team will validate the FTE count estimates that you provide.

The fees are based on the operational resources and infrastructure we need to deliver CAF services to organizations of each size. Fees include access to both eduroam (including eduroam Visitor Access) and Federated Identity Management (FIM).

 

FTEs Annual Participation Fee
1 – 4,999 $2,600
5,000 – 9,999 $3,000
10,000-19,999 $6,000
20,000-34,999 $9,000
35,000 and over $14,000

 

* CANARIE Members can apply the annual discount of $2,600 toward these participation fees. The Member discount can only be applied to one CANARIE program or service per year (see the membership section for details).

For Content, Service, and Application Providers

For the purposes of the Canadian Access Federation (CAF), content, service, and application providers are considered organizations undertaking, supporting, or enabling research or education in Canada. Higher education and research institutes are not included in this category. By participating in the Canadian Access Federation (CAF) and enabling Federated Identity Management (FIM), you can:

  • Simplify how the Canadian research and education community connects to your content, services, and applications. FIM eliminates the need for each user to create and manage access accounts on your systems – students, staff, and faculty of institutions that participate in CAF will simply use their home credentials to access your services.
  • Roll out new services quickly and easily, without having to implement separate identity and access management protocols for each.
  • Avoid the privacy implications of maintaining user data.

Canadian-based organizations outside the research and education sector can offer eduroam as free, seamless Wi-Fi access to students, researchers, and faculty visiting from eduroam-enabled institutions without creating and managing guest Wi-Fi accounts.

Participation Fees for Content, Service, and Application Providers

The participation fees for organizations that offer services to the research and education community are summarized below. Participation fees are waived for non-profit service providers and for eligible organizations that broadcast the eduroam Wi-Fi network at their site(s).

 

Participation Type Annual Participation Fee
Service Providers with more than 20 employees  $2,600
Service Providers without Canadian headquarters $2,600
Service Providers with 20 or fewer employees, with headquarters in Canada $0
Non-Profit Service Providers $0
eduroam Service Providers/Broadcasters $0

 

* CANARIE Members can apply the annual discount of $2,600 toward these participation fees. The Member discount can only be applied to one CANARIE program or service per year (see the membership section for details).

Program News

October 23, 2017

Canadian students on the move rely on eduroam one million times a day

Read More

September 30, 2016

Let’s Talk About our Trust Issues

Read More

September 16, 2016

Canadian students, staff and faculty staying connected wherever they roam

Read More