RE: Issue 196: User-Name Attribute

["Bernard Aboba" <bernard_aboba@hotmail.com>]

> Who cares?  I'm not being facetious: if the value is unknown by the client 
> & unused by the >server, why does it matter what the value is?

The lack of a User-Name attribute may prevent proxies from forwarding the 
Access-Request.  Also, some RADIUS servers will not be able to handle an 
Access-Request without a User-Name attribute.

Note that this problem has been encountered before.  For example, in RFC 
3579 there are situations in which the User-Name is not known, such as when 
the NAS does not send an EAP-Reuqest/Identity to initiate the EAP exchange 
(e.g. NAS could start off with an EAP-Request for a method, or could send an 
EAP-Start to the RADIUS server).  Despite this, RFC 3579 always fills in the 
User-Name attribute.

RFC 3579 Section 2.1 recommends:

"  If the NAS initially sends an EAP-Request for an
  authentication method, and the peer identity cannot be determined
  from the EAP-Response, then the User-Name attribute SHOULD be
  determined by another means.  As noted in [RFC2865] Section 5.6, it
  is recommended that Access-Requests use the value of the
  Calling-Station-Id as the value of the User-Name attribute."



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