RADIUS

Case Studies in Deployment and Availability

Once you’ve focused on securing the availability of your hardware and software through redundancy, you should examine making the entire RADIUS service as a whole more available. It’s important to remember, however, that consultants who specialize in designing a network topology to be highly available make six-figure salaries doing just that, so to present every opportunity to make a system highly available is beyond the scope of the concept here. Like all plans for failure, you as the designer must strive to reach the “sweet spot” between cost and results.

In that spirit, I’ll present two example network topologies that accomplish the most redundancy and availability without breaking the bank. I will cover the availability and redundancy strategies used in each design; then, you can take the best practices outlined here and use them as a starting point for your own design. And remember, part of being a designer is knowing when to bring in the big guns: don’t be afraid to call a consultant if you realize that you’re in over your head. It would simply be a waste of time, money, and system resources to continue at that point.

Scenario 1: A small, regional ISP

Raleigh Internet, Inc., is a small Internet service provider operating within the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina. The provider offers service to residents of the region and the surrounding counties. Raleigh Internet has created points of presence in three locations: ...