Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (radius)
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Charter
Last Modified: 07/10/2000

Current Status: Concluded Working Group

Chair(s):
    Carl Rigney  <[email protected]>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):
    Randy Bush  <[email protected]>
    Bert Wijnen  <[email protected]>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:
    Randy Bush  <[email protected]>

Mailing Lists:
    General Discussion:[email protected]
    To Subscribe:      [email protected]
        In Body:       subscribe ietf-radius
    Archive:           ftp://ftp.livingston.com/pub/radius/archive

Description of Working Group:

Background:

The original specification for and implementation of RADIUS was written
by Steve Willens of Livingston Enterprises in response to a need
outlined by the earlier NASREQ working group, and has been deployed by
multiple vendors over the past 3 years.

No other working group appears to be addressing the topic of
communicating authentication and authorization information between a
Network Access Server and a central authentication & authorization
server, and general consensus is that standardization of such a
protocol would be extremely useful.

This working group will produce four documents:

1) By early '96, an informational RFC documenting the RADIUS protocol
  already deployed for use by a Network Access Server (NAS) to
  communicate with a remote Authentication & Authorization database
  server, with minor amendments reflecting field experience of several
  implementations over several years at hundreds of sites.

2) By February '96, an informational RFC describing RADIUS Accounting.

3) By early '97, a full standard RFC documenting the RADIUS protocol,
  addressing any operational or security issues raised concerning the
  informational RFC. This document will obsolete goal 1.  (If the
  Internet-Draft for goal 1 is deemed suitable by the IESG for release
as
  a Proposed Standard instead of informational, then goals 1 and 3 will
  be merged.)

4) Starting in February '96 and concluding in '97, a RADIUS Extensions
  RFC documenting extensions for additional functionality within the
  RADIUS framework, which will be interoperable with the base RADIUS
  defined in the document for goal 3.

The intent in goals 1 through 3 are to document the protocol as it
exists and is used currently, in such a way as to allow interoperable
implementations to be written from the RFC.  Minor modifications to
enhance interoperability or operation based on field experience are
suitable, major overhauls are outside the scope of this working group's
charter.  Goal 4 is to provide a mechanism for additional features
deemed widely useful to be added to the existing framework, for example
to provide better support for EAP.

Clearly outside the scope of the charter are the following:

1) NAS Standardization is outside the scope.  We're defining standard
  RADIUS, not a standard encompassing everything about network access
  servers.  This effort does not require NASes to implement RADIUS; it
  just defines how the RADIUS Protocol works on NASes that do
  implement RADIUS.

2) RADIUS is not intended as a NAS management protocol; SNMP already
  exists for that.

3) Management of the Authentication/Authorization database itself is
  outside the scope.

4) Alternative transport protocols such as IPX or IPv6 appear
  straightforward, but will not be addressed in this effort.

5) The flexibility and generality of RADIUS have led to its use for
  other applications, but this Working Group is addressing only those
  uses involving user dial-in to Network Access Servers.

Goals and Milestones:

  Done         Meet at Dallas IETF.

  Done         Submit revised Radius Accounting Internet-Draft.

  Done         Submit revised Radius Internet-Draft.

  JAN 96       Submit Radius Accounting Internet-Draft to IESG for
               consideration as an Informational RFC.

  JAN 96       Submit Radius Internet-Draft to IESG for consideration as
               an Informational RFC.

  FEB 96       Submit Internet-Draft on Radius Extensions.

  MAR 96       Meet at LA IETF to deal with any pending issues on Radius
               or Radius Accounting Internet-Drafts.

  APR 96       Submit Radius protocol Internet-Draft to IESG for
               consideration as a Proposed Standard.

  MAY 96       Submit revised Radius Extensions document as
               Internet-Draft.

  NOV 96       Submit Radius Protocol to IESG to be considered for
               elevation to Draft Standard.


Internet-Drafts:

 No Current Internet-Drafts.

Request For Comments:

 RFC   Stat Published     Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC2059 I    JAN 97    RADIUS Accounting

RFC2138 PS   APR 97    Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)

RFC2139 I    APR 97    RADIUS Accounting

RFC2548 I    MAR 99    Microsoft Vendor-specific RADIUS Attributes

RFC2618 PS   JUN 99    RADIUS Authentication Client MIB

RFC2619 PS   JUN 99    RADIUS Authentication Server MIB

RFC2620 I    JUN 99    RADIUS Accounting Client MIB

RFC2621 I    JUN 99    RADIUS Accounting Server MIB

RFC2809 I    JUN 00    Implementation of L2TP Compulsory Tunneling via
                      RADIUS

RFC2865 DS   JUL 00    Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS)

RFC2866 I    JUL 00    RADIUS Accounting

RFC2869 I    JUL 00    RADIUS Extensions

RFC2867 I    JUL 00    RADIUS Accounting Modifications for Tunnel Protocol
                      Support

RFC2868 I    JUL 00    RADIUS Attributes for Tunnel Protocol Support