We do the same thing, live into any ODBC DSN using RadiusNT. You need to also add in there
the Acct-Delay-Time, though. We use the start records ONLY to populate a second table
that has an entry for each port. This gives a very fast overview of who is on-line at
any time and doesn't require any overhead on contacting a NAS to figure it out.
I am working on a new program that is a part of a paging monitor package that will
check up on the Portmastes to verify the DB accuracy.
Only the stop records are kept in the database. This saves a lot of space. Using
a unique key constraint, you can avoid duplicate accounting records very well
to eliminate errant billing.
> * When multiple session ID's start popping up, it doesnt care, it does not
> use session id's at ALL.
But you have to make sure you discard the duplicates so not to double bill
someone. This is native to a DB installation and very easy to do.
> * Mutliple radius daemons can record to the same database, since the msql API
> provides functions to connect to msql databases over inet.
Yes. On the bigger installations, we seperate accounting and authentication
to different machines, all running RadiusNT. Since its all database driven,
it doesn't need to sync anything, and you have excellent fail over/backup
capabilities.
> * If the msql database happens to be unreachable, it logs the exact sql query
> required to a file. This file can then be piped into msql.
We allow simulataneous detail file and ODBC logging. In case something happens
to the SQL Server, we have fail over capabilities to use an alternate SQL Server.
So you have put together a SQL Server farm, replication set, or whatever you need
to handle this type of situation. We also have a program called det2odbc which
will import standard detail format files into an ODBC database. Very handy
for getting information out of your log files.
-- Dale E. Reed Jr. (daler@iea.com) _____________________________________________________________________ Internet Engineering Associates | RadiusNT, Emerald, and NT FAQs Internet Solutions for Today | http://www.iea.com/~daler