On Sat, 10 Aug 1996 patrick@value.net wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Aug 1996, Steven P. Crain wrote:
>
> > > > 1. Parse you RADIUS Accounting logs.
> > > > 2. Use a program like 'pmwho' - see PortMaster Pointers on our web.
> > >
> > > Choose 2! Choose 2! We rolled our own accounting based on pmwho because
> > > we were failing to get a large number of RADIUS stop records. Works much
> > > better.....
> >
> > No, choose a combination of 1 and 2. Its much more robust if you need it.
> > SNMP would be much better than pmwho, but the portmasters don't have the
> > MIB extensions they would need to make that useful.
>
> What we did here is fire off pmwho's at a regular interval, logging to a
> central database, and then manipulate that database. The RADIUS accounting
> logs would have been sufficient had everything been getting logged, which
> it is not.
>
> I fail to see how using the RADIUS accounting logs, with records that are
> not always logged, can be combined with a pmwho utility to make a more
> robust solution than a pmwho type solution. I am interested in hearing your
> approach.
pmwho is only capable of providing approximate data, like the person has
been on for 3 minutes, not 197 seconds like radius accounting can produce.
Also, pmwho only gives you accuracy based on how often you query. To be
able to bill in one-minute increments, you need to run pmwho once a
minute, which does not scale very well, :-).
So, start packet = throw in database
Stop packet = throw out connection and bill for it the precise time in the
record.
Pmwho says person is on who we don't know about = create an approximate
record of when the person logged on in the database.
Pmwho says person is on who we know about = mark in the database that we
know the pserson is on for partial billing purposes
Pmwho says someone isn't on that we thought was = bill them for the last
pmwho mark and clear out the entry in the database.
But you have to make it more complex to handle things like duplicate
packets, stop packets arriving after we just cleared the user with pmwho,
keeping track of partial billing for connections that run a long time,
etc.
Steven P. Crain scrain@shore.net
Unix Administration and Programming
North Shore Access
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