(RADIATOR) Load balancing radiator part 2

Alex Sharaz A.Sharaz at hull.ac.uk
Wed Jun 7 11:19:19 CDT 2006


Yup in ServerIron it's called sticky persistence 

First hit this when we load balanced our web caching service with
authentication switched on. Without the persistence the user got
prompted for a userid and password depending upon which web cache they
were connected to.
A
-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh Irvine [mailto:hugh at open.com.au] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 5:13 PM
To: Alex Sharaz
Cc: radiator at open.com.au
Subject: Re: (RADIATOR) Load balancing radiator part 2


Hello Alex -

I should have been a bit more precise in my previous comments.

The loadbalancer you are using I suspect is doing source/destination  
address pair load distribution - ie. all of the requests from a  
particular NAS are going to the same target Radiator host.

Per-request load balancing will not work with EAP due to the state  
that is maintained by the target Radiator host while processing a  
series of EAP radius requests, which is what I was referring to.

regards

Hugh


On 7 Jun 2006, at 06:23, Alex Sharaz wrote:

> Chaps,
> As of yesterday we've got a Foundry serveriron providing a load  
> balanced
> RADIUS service against 4 radiator servers that works irrespective the
> authentication type that's thrown at it.
>
> I'm currently using eap-peap/eap-mschapv2 and eap-ttls /mschapv2  
> against
> it from a number of ras clients and it works a treat
> Alex
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hugh Irvine [mailto:hugh at open.com.au]
> Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 6:41 AM
> To: Alex Sharaz
> Cc: radiator at open.com.au
> Subject: Re: (RADIATOR) Load balancing radiator part 2
>
>
> Hello Alex -
>
> As you have discovered, you can loadbalance simple radius requests,
> because they are single packet send, single packet response.
>
> However, you have also discovered that you cannot do the same thing
> with EAP, due to the multiple exchanges of radius requests required
> for EAP. Therefore you cannot use loadbalancing for EAP.
>
> regards
>
> Hugh
>
>
> On 27 Apr 2006, at 02:43, Alex Sharaz wrote:
>
>> Chaps,
>>
>> A while back I sent a mail message to the list about load balancing
>> auth/accounting to multiple radiator servers via a serverironXL box.
>>
>> The config at the time had the serveriron performing source address
>> translation so all the radiator server saw from a client point of  
>> view
>> was the ip address of the serveriron.
>>
>> I've now configured the serveriron not to perform source address
>> translation and each radiator server now sees the ip address of the
>> ras
>> client.
>>
>> Well, it sort of works.
>>
>> Our web caching service is configured to use radius pap auth and that
>> works just fine via the assigned virtual ip address for the load
>> balancing radius service.
>>
>> Using a dot1x client (Meetinghouse and the Odyssey, one on a laptop
>> and
>> one of a desktop) I can configure a switch to point to each of the
>> real
>> servers in succession and eap-ttls /mschapv2 and eap-peap/eap- 
>> mschapv2
>> both work just fine
>>
>> However, if I go via the vip assigned to the load balanced service  
>> for
>> either of the eap-XX methods, you get prompted for a userid and then
>> nothing. The clients time out and ask for the userid again a  
>> couple of
>> times and then give up.
>>
>> In the radiator logfile, I've got single line entries ( Resuming
>> session
>> for Radius:context......)
>> that I don't see if I go directly to the real servers.
>>
>> It only affects the eap type connections. I'm running radiator 3.14
>> with
>> a patch set from 07/04/06
>>
>> Is there anything else I should be configuring at the Radiator end?
>> Alex
>>
>>
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Handling with Radius::AuthFILE:
>> eapAuth
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Handling with EAP: code 2, 9, 25
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Response type 1
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Resuming session for
>> Radius::Context=HASH(0x9d9147c)
>>
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: EAP result: 3, EAP TTLS Challenge
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: AuthBy FILE result: CHALLENGE, EAP
>> TTLS
>> Challenge
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Access challenged for
>> anonymous at hull.ac.uk: EAP TTLS Challenge
>> Tue Apr 25 12:38:06 2006: DEBUG: Packet dump:
>> :********************************************************************

>> *
>
>> ********************
>> To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go
>> to http://www.hull.ac.uk/legal/email_disclaimer.html
>> *********************************************************************

>> *
>
>> *******************
>
>
> NB:
>
> Have you read the reference manual ("doc/ref.html")?
> Have you searched the mailing list archive (www.open.com.au/archives/
> radiator)?
> Have you had a quick look on Google (www.google.com)?
> Have you included a copy of your configuration file (no secrets),
> together with a trace 4 debug showing what is happening?
>
> -- 
> Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server
> anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows, MacOS X.
> -
> Nets: internetwork inventory and management - graphical, extensible,
> flexible with hardware, software, platform and database independence.
> -
> CATool: Private Certificate Authority for Unix and Unix-like systems.
>
> **********************************************************************

> *******************
> To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go  
> to http://www.hull.ac.uk/legal/email_disclaimer.html
> **********************************************************************

> *******************


NB: I am travelling this week, so there may be delays in our  
correspondence.

-- 
Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server
anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows 95/98/2000, NT, MacOS X.
-
Nets: internetwork inventory and management - graphical, extensible,
flexible with hardware, software, platform and database independence.
-
CATool: Private Certificate Authority for Unix and Unix-like systems.

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