Freeradius-Users Digest, Vol 30, Issue 24

[wlan at mac.com]

> [...]
>   <sigh>  You started asking questions on the FreeRADIUS list.  Rather
> than updating the FreeRADIUS Wiki, you've gone somewhere else.  Nice.
>

Sorry about that. I intended to put it in the freeradius wiki (and  
still will, if desired), but thought it was too off-topic after all -  
the site otherwise being rather vendor agnostic. No disrespect  
intended...

>> I took a perhaps less hostile classification than 'broken' - and  
>> labeled
>> them as having a "AC" or "Client" perspective.
>
>   Perhaps "non RFC compliant" would be a politer choice of words.
>

Indeed...

>> Of course, the Access
>> Controller/NAS  is the right meaning as defined in this forum.
>
>   Perhaps you haven't been reading my messages.  This forum is NOT
> defining anything.  The definitions existed for years before  
> FreeRADIUS
> existed.  Stop trying to claim it's a disagreement between vendors.
> It's not.
>

Of course, sorry 'bout that. What I meant was more like "as  
acknowledged as fact in this thread"...

>   The default should be the correct meaning.  The documentation should
> have big bold warnings that vendors doing it the other way are
> non-compliant.
>

Yes. This is another reason why I ended up documenting this elsewhere  
-- where I can link it into the more relevant documentation - just as  
you suggest - acknowledging and high-lighting the non-compliance.

>> Huh, I wonder if there was something originally 'lost in translation'
>
>   The original RFC's were written the the designers and  
> implementors of
> RADIUS, in Ann Arbour, Michigan, USA.  They might be poorly  
> phrased, but
> there is no confusion.
>
>> with how this got implemented. With some Googling, I came across:
>>
>>     http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/wlan/ir61.pdf
>>
>> Which states for Acct-Input-Octets: "Volume of the downstream  
>> traffic of
>> the User" and Output-Octets with "upstream traffic of the user". That
>> sounds rather Client centric -- it's not to / from the User, for
>> instance. Are we expecting too much from the (off-shore) out-sourcing
>> companies? :)
>
>   Apparently people implementing NAS equipment can't be bothered to  
> read
> the spec, or to ask questions if they don't understand it, or to see
> what the large vendors do.

It would be interesting to know the history of this all. One vendor  
probably got it wrong and others followed the (wrong) vendor. Perhaps  
the lesson here is that if you follow a vendor, make it Cisco :)

David