Re: (PM) Radius (fwd)

Karl Denninger (karl@Mcs.Net)
Thu, 6 Nov 1997 16:41:47 -0600

On Thu, Nov 06, 1997 at 02:20:13PM -0800, MegaZone wrote:
> Once upon a time Jacob Suter shaped the electrons to say...
> >But still, radius is supposed to be a security system right? The BBS
>
> Right - and not a resource allocation protocol.
>
> There is also a BIG difference between single point restriction and
> distributed restrictions.
>
> Several RADIUS servers claim to do it, there is *one* that I know of that
> really does it properly. I believe Cistron uses an SNMP backchannel to
> check and eliminate the race conditions inherent in RADIUS. Any system
> relying solely on RADIUS packets is fundamentally flawed.

SNMP doesn't do it either. The time required to do an SNMP lookup across a
universe of systems is not going to work. You're still counting on an
external piece of information to "point you at" the place to look.

There IS a way to get very, very close to 100% accurate on this without
needing to query back to the box for verification.

--

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