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Re: Fixes Issue: Interim-Accounting-Interval and Local Configuration

Barney Wolff wrote: 
On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 10:05:32AM -0700, Bernard Aboba wrote:

The Interim Accounting Interval is often set in order to ensure against
loss of income by billing systems.  So I can understand why there is
concern if an Interim-Accounting-Interval attribute sent by a RADIUS
server would be ignored by the NAS.

Although I do not recall the conversations that lead to this paragraph
being inserted, I think the concern may relate to inappropriately small
values being sent by a RADIUS server.  For example, if the implementation
has a setting for "minimum Interim-Accounting-Interval" then I would say
that this should not be overridden by a smaller value, but could be
overridden by a larger one.



I think the issue is whose policy shall apply, when the RADIUS server
and NAS are under different administrative control.  Setting the value
in the NAS is the equivalent of overriding whatever value is set by
the server in the proxy that (presumably) should exist between the NAS
and the server in this case.


Thats an interesting point. In wholesale environments sometimes the wholesaler wants to control specific config bits such as compression, for instance. For compression it would be undesireable for a retailer to turn it on for users as it significantly degrades the performance and hence would affect subscribers for other retailers as well.

In this case too a smaller interim value would presumably chew up more resources, so I agree with Bernard that retailers should be able to change the interval time on a per user basis as long as they are not increasing the frequency of updates beyond a configured threshold.


Murtaza


However, if the nature of the implementation setting is "use value X by
default, but allow the RADIUS server to override it" I don't understand
why that should be prohibited.



One can always speculate on why values would be configured directly in
the NAS if the proxy is under the same administration.  Perhaps the
thinking was that some NASes may be intelligent enough to pick the right
server based on NAI or other info without an intervening proxy.  In that
case configuration of values on the NAS is the equivalent of doing so
in a virtual proxy, and, since a proxy can always override attribute
values, the NAS settings win.

A definite choice, even if "wrong", is probably better than uncertainty
in cases like this.

Regards,
Barney

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