[isf-wifidog] Ok, the real message: RADIUS, MySQL, Postgres, reimplementations & the Sherbrooke meeting and other things

[Benoit Grégoire]

On May 27, 2009, Michael Lenczner wrote:
> I think that was a very helpful email for people that didn't know the
> origins and goals of the project and - like me - are trying to think
> though Radius but don't know enough about it.  Thanks!
>
> The one thing I would want to add - or correct under the response to
> "> 1- RADIUS is designed to manage users"
>
> Benoit says:
> "> 1- User login handling is a relatively minor aspect of WiFiDog. It's
> central
>
> > to RADIUS. Minor for wifidog but with a rather unique twist: the focus
> > managing hundreds of thousand users that are allowed to self-subscribe
> > and freely use the network, and then manage abuse of any single user
> > without human intervention. Furthermore, the system has to track
> > displaying content taking while taking into account which content the
> > user has previously seen and where. Basically manage users as a big set,
> > not individually (for the longest time, there wasn't even a facility to
> > delete them, because in general it's undesirable to do so). If user's
> > can't self-subscribe WiFiDog just plain doesn't care where the
> > username-password pairs come from. RADIUS, LDAP, whatever. But even if we
> > did rely entirely on a mandatory RADIUS backend, we would have had to
> > write a user management backend for said RADIUS server to provide all
> > these services. Relying on a RADIUS server and the use it as a dumb
> > user/password store just doesn't make sense."
>
> There are three points here.
>
> The first is that users can self-subscribe.  I'm curious to know if
> and how Radius allows for this.

All (well, just about) RADIUS servers allow adding users through plugins, or 
direct manipulation of their backend data store.  However, as far as I know 
standard RADIUS extension to allow creating a user in a RADIUS server using 
only the RADIUS protocol.
 
> Secondly, managing users as a big set, not as individually. I don't
> know how Wifidog currently accomplishes this, but I know Benoit well
> enough to know that he's referring to something specific.  Any help?

I'll give it a shot verbally  the next time we meet, then maybe I'll have 
something short enough and understandable enough to post.


-- 
Benoit Grégoire
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