Second that scaling RADIUS is hard... You have to consider retry timers from CPE, BNG, RADIUS Proxies etc (This defines a fundamental timeout constraint you really must try to reply before retries start to dominate load). You have to understand the request rate distribution You have to understand the response rate distribution You have to understand network card and kernel settings to balance packet loss vs latency. Similarly, the queue sizes in the RADIUS server How does non-RADIUS DB activity change the performance If virtual do other workloads change all the numbers How fast is are the BNGs able to process new DHCP/RADIUS/PPP etc. How fast is the RADIUS config with all interactions able to respond What does everything look like if one BNG fails What does everything look like if one major site fails How about a network config error isolating the RADIUS service for an hour And this is just a short list of the obvious things. There are a few really nasty ones... at really high packet rates the Linux kernel may need tuning to ensure it processes enough packets per interrupt to keep up. (With checksum offload it can wrap the ring buffer allow corrupted packets). Each fact is relatively simple getting it all together and then designing scaling of the solution is not. Alster Winfield From: Alan DeKok via Freeradius-Users <freeradius-users@lists.freeradius.org> Date: Wednesday, 28 October 2026 at 03:13 To: FreeRadius users mailing list <freeradius-users@lists.freeradius.org> Cc: Alan DeKok <alan.dekok@inkbridge.io> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Tabulate Open Source Billing systems that uses FreeRadius On Oct 27, 2026, at 9:59 AM, Douglas Fischer <fischerdouglas@gmail.com> wrote:
Where I live, there is a great deal of ambiguity regarding the definitions of ERP, CRM, Payment Gateway, Invoice, Billing, OSS, BSS, ACS, and so on. Companies intentionally blur the lines between these "things" as a form of vendor lock-in strategy. This bothers me A LOT!
Yup.
I am looking for one or more open-source options to propose to my small-to-medium-sized ISP network consulting customers, specifically to serve as a RADIUS solution.
Pretty much anything that integrates with a paid billing system will be a paid product. That's just the nature of the product space.
I am looking for a list of billing tools that: 1. Are open source. 2. Use FreeRADIUS as the RADIUS AAA engine. 3. Are not inseparable monoliths, and instead allow for high availability and scalability within the RADIUS layer.
Item 3 pretty much prevents you from using a "pre-built" or "boxed" product. RADIUS scalability is a very, very, complicated process. Alan DeKok. -------------------------------------------------------------------- This email is from an external source. Please do not open attachments or click links from an unknown or suspicious origin. Phishing attempts can be reported by using the report message button in Outlook or sending them as an attachment to phishing@sky.uk. Thank you -------------------------------------------------------------------- Information in this email including any attachments may be privileged, confidential and is intended exclusively for the addressee. The views expressed may not be official policy, but the personal views of the originator. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete it from your system. You should not reproduce, distribute, store, retransmit, use or disclose its contents to anyone. Please note we reserve the right to monitor all e-mail communication through our internal and external networks. SKY and the SKY marks are trademarks of Sky Limited and Sky International AG and are used under licence. Sky UK Limited (Registration No. 2906991), Sky-In-Home Service Limited (Registration No. 2067075), Sky Subscribers Services Limited (Registration No. 2340150) and Sky CP Limited (Registration No. 9513259) are direct or indirect subsidiaries of Sky Limited (Registration No. 2247735). All of the companies mentioned in this paragraph are incorporated in England and Wales and share the same registered office at Grant Way, Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 5QD