Eduserv is a non-profit IT organisation, most famously responsible for the Athens service. More recently, Eduserv have become the operators of the Middleware Assisted Take-Up service (MATU). You can find out more at http://www.eduserv.org.uk/. See also Athens, MATU. Federation A Federation is a organisation composed of institutions which agree on a common set of principles in order to share information. Federations form the core of the Federated trust principle which Shibboleth is designed to use. See also SDSS, Shibboleth. Home Domain Discovery Home Domain Discovery (HDD) is an Athens SSO mode of operation where the user accesses a service provider firstly and it is up to the Athens infrastructure to ascertain where the user comes from. This is an alternative to Local Authentication Assertion (LLA). This mode of operation is analogous to the Shibboleth WAYF approach. See also Single Sign-On, Local Authentication Assertion, Athens, WAYF. I.P. Acronym for Identity Provider. See also Identity Provider.

EduServ is a not for profit company formed on 1 November 1999 to operate the services of CHEST, NISS and Athens, which were formerly hosted by staff of the Universities of Bath, Southampton and East Anglia. It was formed with the support of JISC and HEFCE. http://www.eduserv.org.uk