Federation (information technology)

A federation is a group of computing or network providers agreeing upon standards of operation in a collective fashion.

The term may be used when describing the inter-operation of two distinct, formally disconnected, telecommunications networks that may have different internal structures.^[1]

The term may also be used when groups attempt to delegate collective authority of development to prevent fragmentation.

In a telecommunication interconnection, the internal modus operandi of the different systems is irrelevant to the existence of a federation.

Joining two distinct networks:

• Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would be interoperable.^[2]

Collective authority:

• The MIT X Consortium was founded in 1988 to prevent fragmentation in development of the X Window System.
• OpenID, a form of federated identity.

In networking systems, to be federated means users are able to send messages from one network to the other. This is not the same as having a client that can operate with both networks, but interacts with both independently. For example, in 2009, Google allowed GMail users to log into their AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) accounts from GMail. One could not send messages from GTalk accounts or XMPP (which Google/GTalk is federated with—XMPP lingo for federation is s2s, which Facebook and MSN Live's implementations do not support^[3]) to AIM screen names, nor vice versa.^[4] In May 2011, AIM and Gmail federated, allowing users of each network to add and communicate with each other.

See also

• Federated Mission Networking
• Federated database system
• Distributed social network
• Federated Portal Network
• Federated VoIP
• Webmention
• MX record, *SRV record: Ways of designating what services domains provide and how to access them
• Active Directory Federation Services

References

1. ↑ M. Serrano, S. Davy, M. Johnsson, W. Donnelly, A. Galis - "Review and Designs of Federated Management in Future Internet Architectures" part of the book "The Future Internet - Future Internet Assembly 2011: Achievements and Technological Promises" - Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 6656, 465 pp, ISBN 978-3-642-20897-3, 4 May 2011- Springer http://www.springer.com/computer/communication+networks/book/978-3-642-20897-3
2. ↑ Nate Mook (October 12, 2005). "Microsoft, Yahoo to Link IM Networks". Beta News. 
3. ↑ Claessens, Xavier (2011-11-03). "MSN in Empathy with XMPP". GNOME. GNOME. Retrieved 8 March 2012. Unfortunately it seems the features exposed by their XMPP server are really limited, just like Facebook’s XMPP. 
4. ↑ "About AIM in Gmail". Google. 2009-10-13.