Does Avenda use freeradius?
Hi, I've been looking at getting an appliance from a company called Avenda Systems (www.avendasystems.com). Its a RADIUS appliance with a nice GUI, but I think FreeRADIUS offers all the features that it does. Does anyone have any experience of it? Or a comparison between it and FreeRADIUS? Also I think it may be FreeRADIUS underneath, does anyone know if that is the case? thanks, paul
paul smith wrote:
Its a RADIUS appliance with a nice GUI, but I think FreeRADIUS offers all the features that it does.
Pretty much, yes. It has other features (captive portal, etc.), but those may not be critical in your site.
Does anyone have any experience of it? Or a comparison between it and FreeRADIUS?
Also I think it may be FreeRADIUS underneath, does anyone know if that is the case?
Maybe. A number of these appliance vendors think they have value-add writing their own RADIUS server. I have no idea why... If you can get an evaluation box, do PEAP authentication, and look at the packet traces. It's pretty easy to tell FreeRADIUS from the other RADIUS servers. :) Alan DeKok.
Thanks Alan, It does seem to be freeradius underneath on closer inspection. An interesting question comes from this, if they have added additional modules are they required by the freeradius license to opensource the code for these modules as they are compiled with the server? On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Alan DeKok <aland@deployingradius.com>wrote:
paul smith wrote:
Its a RADIUS appliance with a nice GUI, but I think FreeRADIUS offers all the features that it does.
Pretty much, yes. It has other features (captive portal, etc.), but those may not be critical in your site.
Does anyone have any experience of it? Or a comparison between it and FreeRADIUS?
Also I think it may be FreeRADIUS underneath, does anyone know if that is the case?
Maybe. A number of these appliance vendors think they have value-add writing their own RADIUS server. I have no idea why...
If you can get an evaluation box, do PEAP authentication, and look at the packet traces. It's pretty easy to tell FreeRADIUS from the other RADIUS servers. :)
Alan DeKok. - List info/subscribe/unsubscribe? See http://www.freeradius.org/list/users.html
paul smith wrote:
It does seem to be freeradius underneath on closer inspection.
How can you tell?
An interesting question comes from this, if they have added additional modules are they required by the freeradius license to opensource the code for these modules as they are compiled with the server?
They are required to follow the terms of the GPL, which means giving GPL'd source code to anyone (not just their customers), which also includes any changes or additions *they* made to the GPL'd program. Alan DeKok.
It does seem to be freeradius underneath on closer inspection.
How can you tell?
I've installed it and looked on the disk, all the config files are freeradius.
An interesting question comes from this, if they have added additional modules are they required by the freeradius license to opensource the code for these modules as they are compiled with the server?
They are required to follow the terms of the GPL, which means giving GPL'd source code to anyone (not just their customers), which also includes any changes or additions *they* made to the GPL'd program.
Does this include any modules that are written for freeradius? I'd think running external scripts is OK as these are not compiled against or linked to the freeradius code, but what about modules? Don't these require compilation, would this mean that if you write modules for freeradius and sell the solution you need to provide the source for the modules?
paul smith wrote:
I've installed it and looked on the disk, all the config files are freeradius.
Nice!
Does this include any modules that are written for freeradius?
Yes. They use the API from the server core, which is GPL'd.
I'd think running external scripts is OK as these are not compiled against or linked to the freeradius code, but what about modules? Don't these require compilation, would this mean that if you write modules for freeradius and sell the solution you need to provide the source for the modules?
Yes. If they've added features such as PEAPv2 and EAP-Fast, that code would likely fall under the terms of the GPL. If they don't agree, then they are not following the terms of the FreeRADIUS license. Alan DeKok.
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