Subject: Re: (usr-tc) SNMP challenge: ARC username from IP address

From: Mike Andrews <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 1999 04:32:13 +0000

On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Aaron Nabil wrote:

> Uh, I'm assuming they want to do this SNMP rigamarole for some specific
> reason, and I'm guessing that, like us, they simply save the IP->username
> association in a database when the person logs in.  If it were just a
> matter of finding out what user corresponds to which IP address (or
> vice-versa), it's just a couple SQL queries.

The specific reason is "it's portable".  It works on any platform
regardless of Radius server or SQL server or even operating system
(NT/Unix).  This is for a set of tools I give away...  and if I'm giving
away code, it makes sense to have as little site specific code as
possible. :)

The code is pretty easy to replace with faster site-specific code if you
want to.  I could speed it up for my own use by having Cistron log to
MySQL and do queries off of that, sure...  I'm not currently doing that
but it'd be easy for me to do.

Telnet would also work and is more or less portable, but I'd rather not
have the admin password for my ARCs in plaintext in a Perl script.

Cistron Radius's built-in tracking of users currently online doesn't work
if you are running two parallel Radius servers for redundancy.  If Radius
server 1 goes down and server 2 starts authenticating people for a few
minutes, your database of who's online at the time is trashed.  Even with
just one running, it tends to drift out of sync with reality at times.  I
need something that's going to always work.

Mike Andrews (MA12) * [email-masked] * http://www.bit0.com/
VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY
Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, & Shelbyville
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925

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