Representatives of academic federations met in Prague

Representatives of leading world academic federations met at the first international workshop of REFEDS (Research and Education FEDerationS) group, which was held by the CESNET association on Monday 3 September in Prague. The International Federation Peering Meeting was attended by 30 prominent experts from 23 countries of Europe, North and South America, Australia and Japan to discuss the issues of linking the identity federations. Major topics of the workshop were the aspects of policies applied within federations and among federations.

The community of research and education federation REFEDS as a part of TERENA (Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) has focused not only on technical tasks, but also on the definition of common policy necessary for interoperability of institutions cooperating in major networking projects within Europe. The main theme of REFEDS is the solution of problems related to the development, implementation and operation of the distributed authorization and authentication systems. The Czech Republic in the TERENA association and REFEDS community is represented by the association of universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic CESNET, which builds up and develops a national network for the CESNET2 educational research.

The CESNET association has been established by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. At present it is funded mostly from the resources of the governmental Council for research and development, and from the resources of its members. This association has been dealing with research and development of information and communication technologies; it builds and develops the national gigabit network CESNET2 designed for research and education. Thanks to the research activities and achieved results the CESNET association represents the Czech Republic in the pan-European network project GÉANT2, and other international projects.