Radius - What is it - Ducks for cover

[reggiep]

I have happily gone about my business for years without gigving it a moments thought, but I can't go on any longer. Can someone please explain to me why I might need Radius!

 

All my network is secured with active directory so what does Radius server do to secure more?

 

Sorry but I am having a samll moment here!

[powdarrmonkey]

Radius is a common and open protocol, so lots of things talk to it - unlike traditional Netbios and other Windows mechanisms. It's commonly used in networking because it can do accounting and logging as well as authentication (your ISP almost certainly makes use of it).

 

It's an abstraction, so although the back end can make use of all sorts of authentication protocols - CHAP, PAP, etc - the front end is common to all clients. This makes it much easier to plug devices into it.

 

 

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RADIUS[/ame]

Edited March 19, 2010 by powdarrmonkey

[TechMonkey]

I know I won a RADIUS server something or other on here.

[ricki]

HI

 

A lot of people use radius servers in conjunction with wifi security. The principle is that authentication of all wireless computers is checked in a central place and then it allows the wireless computer to talk to the network or not.

 

I have seen it where the access points are set to check with the radius server before allowing a connection.

 

The procedure then runs like this.

 

The wireless computer talks to the access point.

The access point then asks the radius server if the laptop can come onto the network and it uses the laptop certificate from the certification service to do this.

If it ok for the wireless computer to come onto the network it then allows the wireless computer to talk to the network. Then the user logs on and so on.

 

You can put rules into the radius server which set who can log on when and how.

 

People also use this then using remote desktop connections over vpn and it works in a similar way.

 

Richard