(RADIATOR) Duplicate Requests - Randomness

[Hugh Irvine]

Hello Joe -

These requests are being sent from the NAS, as duplicates, because of  
one of the following reasons:

1. NAS software bug

2. NAS does not receive a response at all

3. NAS does not receive a resonse within the RADIUS timeout window

According to the timestamps on the messages shown below, all of these  
requests are received at the same time, which makes me think of a NAS  
bug.

BTW - a trace 4 debug with LogMicroseconds enabled (requires Time- 
Hires from CPAN) is very useful for these sorts of problems.

hope that helps

regards

Hugh


On 7 Aug 2007, at 06:54, Joe Hughes wrote:

> We have a strange issue that has only recently started to occur. First
> some background. Our Radiator box authenticates ADSL users, allocates
> addresses and receives accounting messages to track usage. It
> allocates addresses from a database table and also stores accounting
> information in the database.
>
> We have some checks in the various stored procedures to block
> duplicate logon attempts and also to do things like detect orphaned
> sessions (Occasionally the NAS\User-session will hang, usually
> indicated by a lack of accounting-updates).
>
> Recently, every two weeks at 00:55am - 01:00am - we seem to get a load
> of duplicate requests and lost packets that cause us some problems.
> For maybe a one or two minute period;
>
> - STOP messages are lost if a session ends, so the session ends on the
> NAS, but not in our database; causing duplicate login attempts (We
> think they are online)
> - Accounting message are ignored, our system then flags them as
> potentially orphaned
>
> The logs show duplicate requests;
>
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 98 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 98 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 98 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 99 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 99 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
> Sun Aug  5 00:58:06 2007: INFO: Duplicate request id 99 received from
> x.x.x.x(1645): ignored
>
> This only happens every other Sunday morning.
>
> We have checked obvious things like backup schedules, traffic levels,
> firewall logs and nothing. This doesn't happen any other day  - but I
> can't explain what is unique about this time to trigger these events.
>
> Its a Cisco 7206 acting as a ADSL L2TP termination point, a common
> ADSL deployment model.
>
> I will run at a higher trace next Sunday to see if I can work out
> exactly what is going on, its very odd.
>
> Is there anything obvious I should check? I think it *must* be a
> scheduled task of some description, but so far, this has drawn a blank
>
> --
> Archive at http://www.open.com.au/archives/radiator/
> Announcements on radiator-announce at open.com.au
> To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo at open.com.au' with
> 'unsubscribe radiator' in the body of the message.



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?
Have you checked the RadiusExpert wiki:
http://www.open.com.au/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

-- 
Radiator: the most portable, flexible and configurable RADIUS server
anywhere. Available on *NIX, *BSD, Windows, MacOS X.
Includes support for reliable RADIUS transport (RadSec),
and DIAMETER translation agent.
-
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.


--
Archive at http://www.open.com.au/archives/radiator/
Announcements on radiator-announce at open.com.au
To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo at open.com.au' with
'unsubscribe radiator' in the body of the message.