Re: Accounting and power cycles.

Joel M Snyder, 1000 lines a day (Joel_M_Snyder@Opus1.COM)
Tue, 14 Nov 1995 18:46:01 -0700 (MST)

> I'm working on a new Radius daemon, and as I read and reread the
> accounting draft, the following scene keeps slapping me in the face.

> a) Customer with a pay-by-hour account signs on.

> b) Radacct starts an invoice for the customer session.

Don't do that. The STOP records include the connect time. As far
as I can tell, you can ignore START records. Get everything you need
from the stop records.

> c) PortMaster freezes for some reason. (All non-trivial systems
> contain bugs after all.)

> d) Shop lacky power-cycles PM.

User gets free time up to them. This compensates them for the
inconvenience of having their terminal server blow chunks on them.

> e) Invoice is never brought to a close and session billing skyrockets.

> f) Customer notices billing discrepancy, and hauls said dude to
> court. Alternatively, long sessions are written off for several
> customers, and ISP loses significant revenue.

> Is it just me, or do people think the PM should send some unforgeable
> message on each power cycle. I have suggested a protocol, however I
> never received a reply from Livingston. What is the appropriate manner
> for suggesting additiond to the RADIUS Accounting draft?

It does; it just does it to the syslog host. For reasons which are
unclear, half of the data you want (well, 90%) goes to one of two UDP
ports and the rest goes to a syslog daemon. And, of course, some goes
to both. (actually, I take that back: the PM syslog is not unforgeable)

jms

Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Phone: +1 520 324 0494 (voice) +1 520 324 0495 (FAX)
jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms Opus One

PLEASE NOTE: The useful parts of Arizona changed
from area code 602 to area code 520 on March 20, 1995.