What is everybody using to authenticate subscribers to their network? We use a variety of hardware so Radius seems the most appropriate. I’ve been messing around with freeradius and daloradius for a month now and can’t seem to it going. I hate linux btw, I really do! So what other options are out there that will stay within the “cheap” budget my boss gives me? I need a turnkey solution as I just don’t have a lot of time to devote toward this being the only IT guy for 75 tower locations.
How do you guys control who accesses your network?
FreeRADIUS is pretty much the gold standard. If you don’t already know *nix, you will have a steep learning curve. If you can handle operating a computer without a mouse, you’ll be fine. I hate Windows. I really do. It takes too long to find a mouse to attach to the computer so that I can click through everything.</in jest> Don’t get me started on the usefulness of the Windows “logs”.
People hate things they don’t understand. You can make friends with *nix if you want. If you don’t want to make friends with it, you won’t. I think *nix is better suited to the ISP environment. Other people disagree. I’m okay with them being wrong.
Your job sounds like mine…
We have DSL, Dial-Up (yes, still), and wireless customers.
I run FreeRADIUS with an SQL database on FreeBSD (another *nix). I have three RADIUS servers, and 70 towers talking to RADIUS. I can take any two offline and the customers never know. One can fall off-line and I can acknowledge the problem in Nagios and sleep through the night. If I lost a second RADIUS box, I would have to get up and do something about it because I don’t sleep well without redundancy.
Just remember, your MikroTik routers have linux under the hood. Don’t hate on linux too much or they will get their feelings hurt and start flapping ethernet ports.
