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