10.3 Other Things RADIUS

There are various other "mini-facets" of RADIUS that I haven't touched on in this book. This section is designed to point you to alternative RADIUS servers, special RADIUS tools that are available to help you with your deployment and day-to-day operation, and various documents that may assist you in learning more about RADIUS.

10.3.1 Other RADIUS Servers

There are several available RADIUS servers:

Cistron RADIUS

Written by Miquel van Smoorenburg, this server has become widely used in the free-software community. It is completely constructed from the original Livingston source. http://www.radius.cistron.nl

GNU-radius

This server is—you guessed it!—another Cistron server-based RADIUS implementation, although unlike the other variants a lot of the code has been rewritten. The server has a rewrite configuration file that is very convenient.

ICRADIUS

This server is a variant of the Cistron server. It includes such added features as support for the MySQL database and a front end in interactive HTML. http://radius.innercite.com

Navis Access

Lucent's server is an extremely flexible, expandable, and scalable RADIUS server—but it is a commercial product.

OpenRADIUS

This server is a completely new implementation with a foundation in the "modular" mind-set, in which all program functionality is based on plug-in code that is completely under the control of the administrator. http://www.xs4all.nl/~evbergen/openradius-index.html

PerlRADIUS

This is an effort to write a RADIUS implementation in Perl. This effort seems to be another "me-too" effort: that is, the developers are writing the code merely to say they have written the code. I see no useful benefit from this distribution and, apparently, its development has recently gone on hiatus.

Radiator

Another RADIUS server, this is written in Perl and is designed for use in smaller implementations.

Steel Belted RADIUS

From Funk Software, this is a commercial product that runs on Windows servers.

VOP RADIUS

From VOP Software, this is another commercially-available Windows-based RADIUS server.

XtRADIUS

Another Cistron server deviate, XtRADIUS supports extensions for running external programs for accounting or authentication. http://www.xtradius.com

YARD RADIUS

This server is derived from the open sources of Livingston RADIUS Server Version 2.1. It has better configuration support and extended features.

10.3.2 RADIUS Tools

The following tools may prove useful to you as you administer your RADIUS implementation.

• The entire RADIUS attribute list is available at http://www.freeradius.org/rfc/attributes.html. Each attribute is cross-referenced to the relevant RFC. This can be handy to have linked onto your management console's desktop.

• A RADIUS accounting log analysis program is available at http://www.shenton.org/~chris/nasa-hq/dialup/radius. This site also provides a front-end for user password changes and administration for Ascend gear.

• The FreeRADIUS people have a user addition script available at their Related Software page at http://www.freeradius.org/related/. They also have live links to the alternative RADIUS servers.

• Paul Gregg has created the RadiusReport utility, available at http://www.pgregg.com/projects/radiusreport/index.php. The utility, written in Perl, analyzes RADIUS logs and creates numerous reports that contain valuable data.