FreeRADIUS can't make progress under certain load

[Alan DeKok]

rihad wrote:
> On 09/11/2011 01:58 PM, Alan DeKok wrote:
>>    Your Perl script is breaking the server.  Fix it.
> I know that. The auth & billing software we're using is admittedly slow.

  Then stop your complaints about FreeRADIUS.  Don't change FreeRADIUS.
 It's fine.

> But see how easy it was to lower max_requests and allow FreeRADIUS to
> make progress on its own during load spikes (like when a NAS reboots).

  That is a bad solution, and one which makes the problem worse.

> PPPoE clients (most of which are ADSL modems) retry auth anyway. Noting
> in radiusd.conf that max_clients shouldn't be set higher than the system
> can process within cleanup_delay seconds might save some poor soul their
> spare time in the future.

  I doubt that.  Everyone else ensures that their system can handle the
load.

> Let me just quote Mr. Arran again:
>> Your NAS is also behaving very strangely. FreeRADIUS only gives up on
>> processing a request if a request with a duplicate ID, SRC IP, and SRC
>> PORT but a different REQUEST AUTHENTICATOR is received.
>>
>> When a NAS retransmits it should use the same ID, SRC IP, SRC PORT and
>> REQUEST AUTHENTICATOR.
> By this it should be clear that it's not NAS resending unanswered auth
> requests, but rather ADSL modems issuing _new_ requests.

  That doesn't matter, even if it was true.

  Pretty much every piece of equipment you have is horribly broken.
Your solution is to break FreeRADIUS rather than the fix the equipment.

  Alan DeKok.