RE: RADIUS Calling-Station-Id for WiMAX

["David B. Nelson" <d.b.nelson@comcast.net>]

Alan DeKok writes...

>   NWG R1 v1.2 Stage 3.doc, page 446 says:
> 
>     5.4.1.6.3 User Identification
> ...
> Calling-Station-Id 31 The MAC address in binary format of the MS
> 
>   Ugh.  And it really is in binary.  It's 6 octets of the Ethernet
> address, not 15 octets of the ASCII version of the Ethernet address.

That's a direct interoperability issue, between WiMAX ports and other types
of network access ports.  I think that having application-domain-specific
syntax and semantics for standard RADIUS attributes is a very bad idea.  It
certainly complicates the development and maintenance of RADIUS server
software that is deployed across such application-domain boundaries.
 
>   Also, the GMT-Timezone-offset attribute (3) is a 32-bit "signed"
> integer, as a time-zone offset from GMT: -12 to +12.  Instead of 0-24.

If the GMT-Timezone-Offset Attribute was initially defined in WiMAX, they
can define the syntax and semantics how that want.  Choosing to diverge from
standard usage in other protocols, as in this example, is probably a bad
idea as well, but for slightly different interoperability reasons, i.e. it
raises the likelihood of programmer error.



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