ACS earns a spot among elite enterprise RADIUS servers by being a pioneer in introducing VoIP support. VoIP user configuration doesn't specify any password, and VoIP accounting/logging is isolated from the other accounting logs. This helps differentiate VoIP users and manage their network access according to their needs.
Cisco Secure Access Control Server. Cisco Systems, (408) 526-4000, (800) 553-6387. www.cisco.com
RadiusNT 5.0 is a component of IEA Software's Emerald management suite; the standard, professional and enterprise versions sell for a fraction of the price of the other servers reviewed. We tested the full-featured enterprise edition, which includes LDAP authentication and support for major token cards. Installation was nearly problem-free, but RadiusNT comes bundled with the Emerald UI, and we had to install the Emerald SQL database. We were still able to interface with other databases, including Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL, MySQL and PostgreSQL, with the ODBC interface.
We administered RadiusNT via its Web-based configuration utility. The GUI was not intuitive--it took us a while to find certain server-configurable attributes. The server does come bundled with a RADIUS client to test the server configuration. And you can start the server from the command prompt in debug mode, which let us identify the root cause of failed authentication. The server was not as forthcoming, however, with support for authentication mechanisms, especially not with mutual-certificate-based mechanisms like TLS and TTLS. It did have adequate support for PEAP.
We were impressed with RadiusNT's time-quota enforcement: Every time someone signs on, that user's time bank is debited for time spent online. The session limit is sent in the authentication response to ensure users can't exceed their allotted times.
Reporting and logging aren't bright spots, though when the server used ODBC to interface with our SQL database, we could customize and query the accounting logs. We were intrigued by RadiusNT's VoIP accounting and its capacity to interface with other VoIP accounting databases. IEA Software said that VoIP support is primarily used to provide calling-card services once the RadiusNT is integrated with a billing platform.
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