Ask HN: Compelling uses for RADIUS?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6380330

by bdunbar • 13 years ago

1 1 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am now de facto the 'network' guy _and_ the linux guy, for an organization providing SaaS (eDiscovery). Go, me.

Reading up on the switches and firewall I'm installing I see that if I have a RADIUS server I can

- Authenticate users to the switch, and router.

- Control access to VLAN.

This is all kinds of cool, and will probably cause me to install a RADIUS server, because 1 is handy and 2 strikes me as a great way to assert control over my network.

Are there any other compelling uses for a RADIUS server?

edwhitesell• 13 years ago

If you're purely looking at control for switches and other network gear, you'll probably be better served by TACACS. That is, provided your network gear supports it. TACACS will let you define fine-grained control, to the point of controlling commands users are able to run.

RADIUS is great to use when providing Internet access. I've used it doing everything from dial-up to 3G, and DIAMETER into the 4G world. In my experience, it has some great uses in the general IT area too, because it's been around for such a long time and is supported (even in the most basic sense) across a wide swath of applications, services, servers, etc. as an authentication mechanism. For example, you'll likely be able to use the same RADIUS server as your networking gear to authenticate users for VPN access. Also, the RADIUS server could use your AD or LDAP infrastructure for the credentials.

You likely won't get much use of the Authorization or Accounting functionality RADIUS provides, but you never know what you'll need in the future.