Re: Formats for structured attributes (was RE: RADEXT WG Last Call on "RADIUS Delegated IPv6 Prefix Attribute")

["Alan DeKok" <aland@ox.org>]

"Nelson, David" <dnelson@enterasys.com> wrote:
> I think it would be very valuable to allow the expression of compound
> data elements in attribute formats that permit an extended form of data
> dictionary driven RADIUS server to add new instances of these attributes
> into the data dictionary.  What I advocate is a mechanism that
> regularizes the on-the-wire encoding of the equivalent of C-language
> structures in RADIUS attributes, such that new attributes can be added
> to a data dictionary, and the sub-elements of the structure can be
> described in that fashion.

  I think many protocol designers would like something similar.  This
is an issue across multiple WG's other than RADIUS.

  My previous company had some proposals in this space, but they never
went anywhere.

> Then maybe we need to discuss a more general notion of a regularized,
> and extensible data model for RADIUS that easily encompasses structured
> data.

  That would be extremely valuable.  The only caveat is that the data
model can't just model the layout of the data, it has to examine the
contents of the data in order to determine packing.

  e.g. Framed-IPv6-Prefix where trailing zeros don't have to be packed
into the attribute.

  The Samba people have an "IDL to C" compiler written in Perl.  It's
not perfect, but it's not that complicated.  Something similar could
be used here.

  Alan DeKok.

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