[AusNOG] {Disarmed} Radius Interim Update Interval

Wed Sep 3 21:43:54 EST 2014

Agree with Chris here but I’ll go one step further. Don’t do it (ok, maybe do it, but seriously consider why you are)…

If all you need is total data, Start/Stop will track total data usage, you don’t really need interim updates. If you need regular updates because of bandwidth control requirements (throttling etc) maybe use it BUT realise that you will have scale problems. Concurrent updates on database accounting records was what I encountered although row-based locking might make this somewhat better but even so, daily granularity of accounting * say 10,000 subscribers is going to create a massive table quickly that your radius server is going to hang around waiting for. You also have no control over things like cost free paths. Additionally you’re either going to use failover radius servers and hope you don’t get overlapping/out-of-order interim updates or accept you might get some transient database corruption on failover/failure… Oh… And forget about actually clustering it (once again I’m coming from the ‘large’ deployment scenario) cause then your going to be moving the concurrency issues into the database itself.

To be honest unless you’re talking super large and maybe I’m just being a biased sysops guy:
a) Do some simple netflow export (no real need for the full one), flowtools and some code reporting on traffic lining up to IPs (based on Start/Stop times or Radius auth responses initiating sessions or DHCP leases, you get the drift) and gain “freezone” capability
b) Use a traffic accounting appliances (this is the “lazy but expensive”) solution
c) Log into your routers (or snmp it) every minute or so and batch update to your DB rather

OR, if you really really want to do interim updates with low resolution (i’ve been in situations where <5min throttle application was the target) consider Radiator and a (potential distributed) memory cache based approach to interim updates with a ‘destage’ of the memory cache to DB on some scheduled period (say.. every minute but as one big batch update into a table you can wait around for rather than holding up your radius server(s)).

Just my 2c,

Stu

On 3 Sep 2014, at 3:00 pm, Chris Gibbs <Chris.Gibbs at gosford.nsw.gov.au> wrote:

> Sorry but ‘depends’ on the situation….
>  
> I’ve had situations where we wanted to enforce bandwidth limits on wifi networks and wanted to send CoA back to the wifi controllers when certain thresholds have been violated. We used the lowest interim value of 5 minutes.
>  
> If it’s purely for counting traffic, then probably higher is better.
>  
> If there are a very high number of concurrent sessions, you will most likely make it even higher to reduce the load on the server.
>  
>  
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> From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Mark Sergeant
> Sent: Wednesday, 3 September 2014 2:52 PM
> To: Tony Wicks
> Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] {Disarmed} Radius Interim Update Interval
>  
> Lowest I’ve done is 5 minutes, largest I’ve seen is many hours. Nowadays I’m a fan of a 15 minute inform.
>  
> Cheers,
>  
> Mark Sergeant
> Operations Manager
> Acurus Networks
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> On 3 Sep 2014, at 1:47 pm, Tony Wicks <tony at wicks.co.nz> wrote:
>  
> I have used between 15 and 60 minutes over the years.
>  
> From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Tristram Cheer
> Sent: Wednesday, 3 September 2014 1:10 p.m.
> To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
> Subject: {Disarmed} [AusNOG] Radius Interim Update Interval
>  
> Hi All,
>  
> I’m doing some work with freeradius at the mo and looking at our accounting interim update interval, We have ours set low but I thought I’d ask the group and see what intervals if any others use for radius based traffic accounting
>  
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