<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd"><html><head><meta name="qrichtext" content="1" /><style type="text/css">p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }</style></head><body style=" font-family:'DejaVu Sans'; font-size:9pt; font-weight:400; font-style:normal;">On May 27, 2009, Michael Lenczner wrote:<br>
> I think that was a very helpful email for people that didn't know the<br>
> origins and goals of the project and - like me - are trying to think<br>
> though Radius but don't know enough about it. Thanks!<br>
><br>
> The one thing I would want to add - or correct under the response to<br>
> "> 1- RADIUS is designed to manage users"<br>
><br>
> Benoit says:<br>
> "> 1- User login handling is a relatively minor aspect of WiFiDog. It's<br>
> central<br>
><br>
> > to RADIUS. Minor for wifidog but with a rather unique twist: the focus<br>
> > managing hundreds of thousand users that are allowed to self-subscribe<br>
> > and freely use the network, and then manage abuse of any single user<br>
> > without human intervention. Furthermore, the system has to track<br>
> > displaying content taking while taking into account which content the<br>
> > user has previously seen and where. Basically manage users as a big set,<br>
> > not individually (for the longest time, there wasn't even a facility to<br>
> > delete them, because in general it's undesirable to do so). If user's<br>
> > can't self-subscribe WiFiDog just plain doesn't care where the<br>
> > username-password pairs come from. RADIUS, LDAP, whatever. But even if we<br>
> > did rely entirely on a mandatory RADIUS backend, we would have had to<br>
> > write a user management backend for said RADIUS server to provide all<br>
> > these services. Relying on a RADIUS server and the use it as a dumb<br>
> > user/password store just doesn't make sense."<br>
><br>
> There are three points here.<br>
><br>
> The first is that users can self-subscribe. I'm curious to know if<br>
> and how Radius allows for this.<br>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"><br></p>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.<br>
<br>
> Secondly, managing users as a big set, not as individually. I don't<br>
> know how Wifidog currently accomplishes this, but I know Benoit well<br>
> enough to know that he's referring to something specific. Any help?<br>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"><br></p>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.<br>
<p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"><br></p><p style="-qt-paragraph-type:empty; margin-top:0px; margin-bottom:0px; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; -qt-block-indent:0; text-indent:0px; -qt-user-state:0;"><br></p>-- <br>
Benoit Grégoire</p></body></html>