Geoffroy Arnoud <garnoud@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I agree on this. Nevertheless (correct me if I'm wrong), when FreeRADIUS acts as a proxy, it can be synchronous or asynchronous, right?
Yes, but I'm starting to think that's wrong. The server should just act synchronously. It's a LOT easier on the server, and can't be wrong...
We need to set different timeout and retransmit per realm (customer request / patch under contruction). Using NAS restransmissions as you suggest supposes to be synchronous, but we need asynchronous behaviour (different TO / retries per realm - independant from the client).
Why? OK, the customers request it, that's nice... but why? What problem do they think it solves? I really don't think per-realm asynchronous retransmits help. I just don't see why they would matter to the home server. Retransmits matter to the NAS, but the NAS controls it's retransmissions...
Using radrelay may prove to be interesting, but was not considered useful because, at design time, we thought FreeRADIUS did respect RFC regarding retransmissions of accounting requests. Maybe in a future release of the project, we can think about using radrelay, but not for the moment.
So maintain local patches.
For accounting requests, if retransmissions are not managed, this may result in billing issues for operators. Interconnection rules tell that if more than a number a accounting interim are missing, then it means that end-user session is over and that session can be terminated and billed. If session is not really terminated, this leads to a revenue loss.
Yes, but that's what radrelay is for. If you're using the proxy RADIUS server as a buffer for accounting packets, then it should log the packets, and do nothing else. A separate process should then forward the packets, and that process should do retransmits.
Nevertheless, we are not in position to tell you what to do or not in the server, but we hope that such a modification (no proxy of accounting) will be marked as a major update of the server in the release notes.
I think you misunderstood what I said. I did NOT say that the server would stop proxying accounting packets. That would be stupid. I *did* say it would stop handling the retransmits itself. If the home server doesn't respond to the proxy, then the proxy won't respond to the NAS, and the NAS will re-transmit, and the proxy will forward the new packet. Alan DeKok. -- http://deployingradius.com - The web site of the book http://deployingradius.com/blog/ - The blog