Subject: Re: Comments on "RADIUS Design Guidelines" document

From: Alan DeKok <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:02:54 +0100

Bernard Aboba wrote:
>> > OK. The question still remains, though. If an attribute is only used in
>> > Accounting-Request packets, does the argument against complex
>> > attributes still apply?
>>
>> My preference would be to say yes, especially where the contents of
>> that attribute are interpreted by *later* policies on the server.
> 
> Now that we have RFC 5176, accounting data can be kept as "state" that is
> later used to construct CoA/Disconnect-Requests.  Is this what you mean?

  No.

  I mean billing based on information in the accounting packets, and
policies based on billing && the state of the user account.

  e.g. Some NAS vendors "helpfully" put traffic usage into a VSA, as a
set of text fields: "476 529 8836734 347474", as "packets in/out, octets
in/out".

  The fact that this is obviously stupid is beside the point.  *Any*
accounting data that is buried inside of a sub-field will magically
become critical information that some company needs to run their billing
engine.

  Alan DeKok.

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