book ? Can you give me the link please On 9/27/2011 9:46 PM, Ian Pilcher wrote:

Has anyone had a look at this book yet?

Ian Pilcher <arequipeno@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm a complete newbie to RADIUS, looking to make use of the features of my new "smart" switches and wireless access point to secure my home network, so the title certainly sounds right.

Has anyone had a look at this book yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

I am currently reviewing it and hopefully in the next few days will put up my thoughts on it: http://www.digriz.org.uk/review-book-freeradius-beginners-guide The author (Dirk van der Walt) lurks on this mailing list. The content is generally rather good, and aside from a few typos, the book is let only on some relatively *minor* points: * use of vendor specifics (Mikrotik/Coova focus), this is probably is related to the authors day-job :) * unfortunately short EAP section, ignoring session resumption and why particular EAP methods meet particular needs * EAP tests done with JRadius and not eapol_test * rlm_filter coverage is a bit short (less than one page) * debugging/diagnosis is covered *far* too late in the book and then generally not at all. Missing are hints on how to make your life easier as a sysadmin (liberal use of screen+tee, rlm_detail and it would not have gone amiss a network monitoring probe thing) All trivially fixed in a revision two if such a thing comes about. Arguably though, and no doubt quite rightly, my points above probably would be better addressed by a FreeRADIUS *reference* book rather than a beginners guide...so I probably am being mean :) The price is reasonable, and if you are a complete newbie, it will get you on your feet. The book definitely does what it says on the tin and I would give it a 7 out of 10... Cheers -- Alexander Clouter .amongst says: Dibble's First Law of Sociology: Some do, some don't.

Hi,

I'm a complete newbie to RADIUS, looking to make use of the features of my new "smart" switches and wireless access point to secure my home network, so the title certainly sounds right.

Has anyone had a look at this book yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

I have finally found the time to give it a look, too. Here's my review: Book Review: FreeRADIUS Beginner's Guide The book „FreeRADIUS Beginner's Guide – Manage your network resources with FreeRADIUS“ by Dirk van der Walt has set itself a bold goal: to transform an ordinary Unix/Linux system administrator from a „Zero“ to a „Hero“ in the topic of Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting with FreeRADIUS. The book is in a very modest price range and available in traditional printed and also an eBook version right here: http://www.packtpub.com/freeradius-master-authentication-authorization-acces...

From my own experience, getting in first contact with the RADIUS protocol in general and FreeRADIUS in particular can be a dreadful exercise: there are many complex concepts to grasp and huge configuration files to master; and plenty of opportunity to break things if you touch the configuration without knowing the do's and don'ts. The FreeRADIUS software package has ample documentation in the form of man pages and comments in configuration files. What was sorely missing – up until now – was documentation that would take an innocent reader by the hand and show him the wonders of RADIUS without too much confusion.

Dirk's book certainly achieves this goal, and more. It dives straight into the matter, touches the RADIUS specification only as much as is needed to understand the software that delivers it. The reader learns how easy it is to get to the „Hello, world!“ equivalent of RADIUS – the first successful authentication, an Access-Accept packet. From then on, the book builds on the milestones achieved by the reader and adds more and more features and complexity. Near the end of the book, the reader has all the required knowledge to run his own little hotspot, a federated „single-sign-on domain“ based on RADIUS or even be part of a large roaming consortium. Being heavily involved in RADIUS myself, as the lead R&D engineer for the „eduroam“ roaming consortium in Europe, and as lecturer on the topic of Secure Network Admission at the University of Luxembourg, I was amazed how often I found myself thinking „Right, couldn't have said it better“ when the author explained some of the particularly hairy concepts – EAP with outer identity just being one example. Of course, there are always those few little things everyone likes to do a bit differently; I'm very much a compile-from-source person and was slightly disappointed to read that the author rather encourages his readers to use distribution packages or build their own RPMs/DEBs. Then again, the target audience is starting from zero, and adding “compile your own” to the stack of things to learn is probably asked a bit much. Another question of taste is the client to use for testing the more complex authentication mechanisms – the book uses a GUI client, JRadiusSimulator, while I very much prefer „eapol_test“ from the wpa_supplicant software suite. It can be so nicely scripted and is as flexible as a Swiss army knife – perfect for Nagios monitoring. In my humble opinion, it would have deserved a significant mention. Lastly, there is a nagging little oversight when it comes to the description of proxying on page 250: Proxying, when done in combination with mutually authenticating EAP methods and with anonymous outer identities doesn't expose usernames nor credentials to the roaming partner. The book doesn't make that aspect overly clear. Then again, peeking at the title, this topic is way advanced and few people will get to a point in their RADIUS life where they would need it. Summarising, I can highly recommend this book as a starter to get into FreeRADIUS. I'm sure the FreeRADIUS users' mailing list would see much less traffic on basic operational and conceptual questions if everyone were to read this book. If you need to get acquainted with FreeRADIUS, do yourself a favour and grab a copy. Greetings, Stefan Winter