Re: The RADIUS attribute space: an assessment

["Alan DeKok" <aland@nitros9.org>]

"Nelson, David" <dnelson@enterasys.com> wrote:
> A recent, off list, discussion about some substantial enhancements
> to the RADIUS protocol as opposed to deployment of Diameter, has
> brought this home.  The impediment to Diameter deployment in this
> instance is that lack of complete, robust, open source
> implementations of Diameter, coupled with readily available open
> source RADIUS implementations and wide deployment of RADIUS.

  Many of the superior features of Diameter are already deployed in
RADIUS.  Radsec, SRV record lookups, vendor attributes, etc. all
mitigate the real-world need to move to Diameter.

  But that's not all.

> The IETF can provide a standardized specification of a better
> protocol, but it can make vendors and operators deploy it.

  To a large extent the operators don't have a choice.  The people who
*are* requiring Diameter in new deployments are the large telecom
providers, who can afford big bucks for new equipment.  Everyone else
in the world is stuck with whatever the vendors implement: RADIUS.

  Since existing deployments can't upgrade to Diameter, they're forced
to extend the life of their current systems by adding new features to
RADIUS servers on whiteboxes.  It seems to work quite well in
practice, which further minimizes the demand on NAS vendors to
implement Diameter.

  Alan DeKok.

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