Re: RFC 2866 - Accounting ON / Accounting OFF packets

[Arran Cudbard-Bell <A.Cudbard-Bell@sussex.ac.uk>]

David Mitton wrote:
> Accounting-On /-Off events do NOT occur for every session.
> They are, as the text says, indicators of the global state of the NAS 
> Accounting.
Yes, and that's the point I was making, there can be no Acct-Session-Id 
because Accounting ON / Off events are not session specific... so the 
RFC contradicts itself.
> Usually you should get an On event when the NAS powers up and RADIUS 
> starts.
> If a NAS Administrator turns Off accounting, or makes a controlled 
> shut down, then you may see an Off event.
> The purpose is to indicate the liveliness of your accounting stream, 
> and since RADIUS is not a "stateful protocol" this is where scraping 
> stateful session data from Accounting can get into trouble.   To 
> further muddy the water, there is no indication if the Accounting 
> state toggles, that the session state on the NAS is lost or not.
They're confusing, and not that informative. I'm wondering whether to just not log them at all. Our APs appear to generate them after any configuration change made to a BSSID or Radio. Nothing else has ever generated them in sufficient quantities as to cause serious problems.

Thanks,
Arran
--
Arran Cudbard-Bell (A.Cudbard-Bell@sussex.ac.uk)
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