racct and radpostauth

[Bjørn Mork]

Arran Cudbard-Bell <a.cudbardb at freeradius.org> writes:

> RFC 2866:
>
>    When a client is configured to use RADIUS Accounting, at the start of
>    service delivery it will generate an Accounting Start packet
>    describing the type of service being delivered and the user it is
>    being delivered to, and will send that to the RADIUS Accounting
>    server, which will send back an acknowledgement that the packet has
>    been received.  At the end of service delivery the client will
>    generate an Accounting Stop packet describing the type of service
>    that was delivered and optionally statistics such as elapsed time,
>    input and output octets, or input and output packets.  It will send
>    that to the RADIUS Accounting server, which will send back an
>    acknowledgement that the packet has been received.
>
> The NAS never provides a service so it should not be sending any
> accounting packets. Just because people demanded it and the vendor
> caved, it doesn't mean its correct or compliant.

No, of course not.  But it may be useful in some settings.

And I really cannot see anything in the above RFC quote which forbids
sending radius accounting packets without providing a service.  It just
states when packets should be sent, and says nothing about when the
shouldn't be sent.

Of course, you may choose to read RFC 2866 as "anything not explicitly
allowed, is forbidden", but I don't think you'll ever make a vendor read
the RFCs like that..


Bjørn