RADIUS docking common problems and adaptation methods in WiFi network billing system

The interface between the WiFi network billing system RADIUS is a technology that can easily be underestimated. Many feel that RADIUS is a standard protocol, with IPs, ports, and shared keys.

RFC 2865 and 2866 define the basic framework for RADIAS authentication and billing, but the problem is that it is too much."Basic"Yeah. CoA (Chance of Administration, RFC 3576) is the key mechanism for WiFi web billing systems to actively disconnect user sessions or modify user bandwidth, but there are wide variations in how different manufacturers do so.

The CoA of Arba requires DM to be accompanied by a specific VSA, the COA of Cisco is doing different things about Ssession-Timeout than it is, and the CoA of Ruckus sometimes needs to send a first-time coA from the CoA-Request portal. If your WiFi network billing system does not match these differences, there are all sorts of weirdities that arise."Sometimes you can break it, sometimes you can't."The problem.

A practical approach is to maintain a VSA dictionary for the market-based NAS manufacturers in the WiFi web billing system interface module. When the system has access-Request information from its suppliers, it automatically loads the corresponding VSA dictionary and special processing logic instead of trying to match all manufacturers with a common set of logic.

RADIUSAccounting uses the UDP protocol, which does not guarantee delivery. In a real network environment, billing is much more likely to be lost than you think. WiFi’s network billing system would be undesired if it only relied on passive receipt of Accouting reports for traffic statistics.——The missing bags are a few more traffic-less.

There are several ways to solve this problem. One is for WiFi to make an intermediary check on the Accounting report.——Sends an Interim-Update request to NAS at intervals (e.g., five minutes) to ensure that the intermediate billing data is not lost. Second, when Accounding-On and Accompanying-Off messages are activated on the NAS end, notification of re-syncing systems is provided by both messages when NAS restarts or the network breaks. Third is maintaining one at the WiFi network billing system end"Expecting a message sequence", if no billing for the corresponding session is received within a given window, you will take it up with NAS.

The reasons for the failure of RADIFUS authentication in WiFi web-based billing systems are very diverse: username error, password error, account default, equipment MAC not on white lists, exceeding simultaneous online limit, NAS per se configuration problems."Authentication failed"The general suggestion that every RADIUS log on the carrier's side is extremely inefficient.

The best way to do this is to sort and document the reasons for certification failure in detail within the system. Each failure has an independent error code and description, which operators can see directly at the management interface"The user failed to authenticate at 08:15 because of insufficient account balances". This fine-tuning failure class can significantly reduce the processing costs of a carrier when the user base is large.

When your WiFi network billing system needs dozens or even hundreds of NAS devices, the single node RADIUS service is clearly inadequate. This time it requires a RadiUS proxy and load balance.——Several RADIUS servers form a cluster and all NAS authentication and billing requests are distributed to different back-end nodes via proxy.

An important design point is to keep the session. Continuous authentication requests from the same user (including initial and subsequent recertification) should be processed as far as possible through the same backend node, because user status information usually slows in memory. If each request is randomly distributed to a new node, the Cache Life Rate will drop significantly, leading to an increase in response delays. The WiFi network billing system RADIUS proxy needs to support a word-keeping strategy based on a user name, such as using the Hashi value to determine route goals. RADIUS describes the interface as a standard protocol problem, but actually does it to involve several dimensions of NAS compatibility, report reliability, failure diagnosis, load balance. Any level of non-handling becomes an ongoing burden of transport when it is online. Instead of patching around after it has been made, more multi-recording differences are tested during the docking phase, with each manufacturer ' s behaviour profile being embedded in a suitable manual that can be directly referenced when it is expanded or replaced. Especially in the case of marginalities that are difficult to recreate in test environments but often occur in production environments, such as changes in the RADIFUS field format following an upgrade of NAS solids and inconsistent reporting times for billing reports under the multi-producer AC+AP portfolio. A good matching manual should contain at least this information: manufacturer and model, solid version, tested list of RADIF functions, known compatibility issues, recommended configuration parameters, and the World Wide Fund scheme. With this manual, there will be a repeatable reference for the replacement of equipment, new shops and training of incoming transport colleagues.