Acct-Delay-Time missing with RADIUS accounting

Alan DeKok aland at deployingradius.com
Mon Feb 22 09:30:21 PST 2016


On Feb 22, 2016, at 12:19 PM, Jouni Malinen <j at w1.fi> wrote:
> I don't see how one would implement a RADIUS server to do something like
> this.. Are Accounting On/Off really used to override Accounting
> Start/Stop information on a session? Is this a case for a deployed
> server today? I would have assumed the sessions would be kept separate
> and On/Off messages more or less ignored for any practical purpose..

  The accounting messages *must* have either an Event-Timestamp, or Acct-Delay-Time, or both.  Otherwise, you have race conditions:

1) NAS reboots
2) user "bob" goes online
3) server receives accounting start for user "bob"
4) server receives accounting "on" for NAS.

  Having Event-Timestamp / Acct-Delay-Time in all packets means that (3) and (4) can be correctly ordered.  Otherwise, in stage (3), the server marks "bob" online, and immediately after in stage (4), marks "bob" offline, because the NAS just rebooted.

  Alan DeKok.




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