[freeside] Interim Radius records and handling DSL accounts.

[ivan at 420.am]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 12:25:25AM +1100, Hugh Blandford wrote:
> > On Tue, 10 Dec 2002, Hugh Blandford wrote:
> > > I have been browsing around the list and I was wondering if
> > > someone with more knowledge could help out.  Does Freeside handle
> > > the interim radius records or update records that can be sent out
> > > from a NAS?  Will it ignore them if it doesn't know what they
> > > are?  If a connection stayed connected for 3 months could
> > > Freeside use the info contained in the update records to do
> > > monthly data based billing without seeing a STOP record?
> >
> > With a session having no STOP record, isn't it hard to tell the difference
> > between an open session and a session that was never terminated properly?
> > That probably doesn't help, but it's something to consider.
> 
> I wouldn't have thought you could tell the difference there.......if you
> haven't received a STOP record then the session should be up and running.

Unless the reliability of NAS boxes has improved significantly since I
last babysat my own, I wouldn't count on it.

> The advantage with UPDATE records is that if you have never received a STOP
> record you can go back to your last UPDATE record and use that.  This is
> definately relevant if you are supporting PPPoA or PPPoE and would like to
> use RADIUS records to do your billing.  As the DSL sessions are supposed to
> be always on and can download vast amounts of data, you wouldn't want to
> miss the STOP record :-))
> 
> How would Freeside treat an UPDATE record if it came across one whilst
> parsing a details file?

Freeside doesn't (yet) parse text details files.  It reads SQL detail
from a RADIUS servers such as ICRADIUS, FreeRADIUS or Radiator.

If someone wants to finish up the text deatil file support, I'll accept
patches, but in the absence of a customer needing it I'll probably work
on the SQL detail stuff instead.

> Will it ignore it (fine) or would it die (bad bad bad :-)?

In the context of the sqlradius export, it ignores them.

-- 
_ivan