(RADIATOR) negative balancetime

[Hugh Irvine]

Hello Ronan, Hello Shaun -

This is one of the most vexing problems with the radius protocol as it 
currently stands.

Because the radius protocol is based on UDP, packets can and do go 
missing, resulting in retransmissions.

As Ronan says, you can use the DupInterval parameter to reduce the 
problem, but it can still occur.

Unfortunately there is no *good* answer to the problem at this time 
(other than making sure that your network infrastructure never drops 
packets and your data links run well below saturated).

This is one of the areas that the next generation protocol (Diameter) is 
designed to address.

If you are interested have a look at the IETF web site 
(http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/aaa-charter.html).


regards

Hugh


On Saturday, August 3, 2002, at 09:25 AM, Ronan Eckelberry wrote:

>     You could use the DupInterval command.  I am using this command 
> right now, but it still seems to do it.  The only reason that I could 
> see is that if it receives 2 Stop packets, it would think the customer 
> used double the time they did.  I'm not sure though.
>  
> -Ronan
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shaun [mailto:shaun at btl.net]
> Sent: Friday, 02 August, 2002 19:19
> To: Ronan Eckelberry; radiator at open.com.au
> Subject: Re: (RADIATOR) negative balancetime
>
> hello again
>  
> You're rite about the duplicate accounting packets. I've checked our 
> detail file and it seems to have 3 records for one login. ie. 1 start 
> and 2 stop. How could you avoid this from happening?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ronan Eckelberry
> To: 'Shaun' ; radiator at open.com.au
> Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 4:11 PM
> Subject: RE: (RADIATOR) negative balancetime
>
>     I receive the same error.  I'm not sure if it is from duplicate 
> ACCOUNTING packets, or maybe some of my NASs are not using the 
> Session-Timeout.  I would like to know if there is any other reason for 
> this as well.
>  
> -Ronan
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-radiator at open.com.au [mailto:owner-radiator at open.com.au] On 
> Behalf Of Shaun
> Sent: Friday, 02 August, 2002 10:47
> To: radiator at open.com.au
> Subject: (RADIATOR) negative balancetime
>
> Hello,
>  
> Does anyone know why i would keep getting huge negative balancetime in 
> my database? I'm using Radiator and an Informix database for prepaid. 
> In the database i have three fields,
>  
> Username       Password            Balancetime
>  
>  
> For some reason, like one in every ten users, the Sessiontime is 
> exceeded and a huge negative value is returned to the database. Most 
> users get a -1 to -7 value which i could understand. Any ideas why this 
> would be happening?
>  
> Regards
> Shaun
>
>
--
Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server
anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows 95/98/2000, NT, MacOS X.
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