Subject: Re: (radius) Servers

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 09:21:42 -0800 (PST)

>> Will the radius servers talk to each other and update their databases ?
>
>This is an implementation issue, not a protocol issue.  This is not
>covered by the RADIUS standard and there is no stadard behavior among
>the existing RADIUS servers.
>
>> This I feel will be required when on one instance for a user the
>> accounting is done by one radius server and at another for the
>> same user the accounting may be done by another radius server.
>> Thus the users utilisation time has to be a cumilative one.
>
>The assumption made by many servers is that all accounting records will
>be postprocessed, rather than processed in real-time.  This means that
>the records from more than one server can be gathered together into
>a single accounting file and the fact that different RADIUS servers
>were used by a single provider is obscured.

Which, by the way, severely limits one's options if the service needs accounting in real-time. An example is a debit card, where the cost of the service must be subtracted immediately following the user's session. This would allow the user to call Customer Support and talk to them about the session. If post-processing were used, the user would get the following response from Customer Service "Sorry, but our records do not show any activity on your card, please call again later." I for one would have a hard time with this.

PatC

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