Becoming a Roaming Operator (RO)

An eduroam federation comes with administrative requirements as well as technical ones. This document uses the eduroam Compliance Statement and the European Configuration definitions and documents; which provide a the baseline for the world-wide eduroam community.

Administrative requirements

Operating a federation involves managing and supervising eduroam Identity Providers, eduroam Service Providers, as well as keeping authentication logs, fulfilling uptime requirements, etc. Prospect federation operators should read and understand the requirements in DS5.1.1 ("eduroam Service Definition and Implementation Plan") at https://eduroam.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/GN2-07-327v2-DS5_1_1-_eduroam_Service_Definition.pdf, particularly sections 4.1.4 ("Roles and Responsibilities - NROs") and section 6 ("Requirements on Confederation Members").

A prospect NRO also needs to commit to the eduroam policy. The European eduroam policy document can be found at https://www.eduroam.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/GN3-12-194_eduroam-policy-for-signing_ver2-4_1_18052012.pdf

The RO may outsource the operation of its technical infrastructure (particularly, the Federation Level RADIUS servers) to a third-party, but will remain responsible for eduroam within its service area.

Information management requirements

A Roaming Operator (RO) must maintain a comprehensive overview over eduroam within its service area, and report about its federation's state regularly. The vehicle for such reports is the eduroam database, where information about the RO and all its eduroam SPs and IdPs is stored. The database web interface is open for eduroam operators only; the entry page can be found here: http://monitor.eduroam.org/db_web/

Generic information on how to deliver information to the eduroam database (JSON, XML Schema format) can be found here: http://monitor.eduroam.org/database.php

Operating a Federation Level RADIUS server (FLR)

Federation Level RADIUS (FLR) servers are used to connect eduroam Identity Providers and eduroam Service Providers with each other, and also provide an uplink from the federation to all other eduroam federations. They are managed by Roaming Operators (ROs). The RO may outsource the operation to a third-party, but will remain responsible.

Since the concept of an eduroam federation geographically usually maps to a territory or economy, FLRs are central to the deployment of eduroam; there is conceptually only one FLR per RO territory - but for resiliency reasons, it is recommended to provide multiple instances in a failover setup.

An eduroam federation comes with administrative requirements as well as technical ones. The exact requirements may differ between federations. This document uses the European definitions and documents; which provide a baseline for the world-wide eduroam community.

Hardware requirements

RADIUS is a very lightweight protocol, and does not require expensive hardware setups. Even the busiest eduroam federations operate their server on a single contemporary hardware or Virtual Machine, without experiencing overload conditions.

As with every other professionally-operated service though, you should keep in mind that service uptime is paramount, and plan your procurement accordingly. Examples:

  • In the case of virtual machines, use an underlying infrastructure which enables you to migrate machines without VM downtime, if possible.
  • In the case of physical machines, use hot-pluggable parts where possible; and ideally, keep either spare hardware parts at hand or a set up a decent service contract.

eduroam Europe is in the process of migrating to RADIUS/TLS for its federation servers. In the course of this process, hardware requirements for the servers may change. This section will be updated as necessary.

Software requirements and setup

eduroam does not prescribe any particular RADIUS implementation. The technical requirements for eduroam however narrow the set of usable RADIUS server implementations, and the observed deployment of eduroam federation-level servers shows patterns regarding implementation popularity.

This section will present a few typical implementation setups. Note, however, that a federation is free to use a different implementation so long as the implementation can satisfy the eduroam technical requirements.

The sections for each implementation are accompanied by a skeleton configuration file, which should be usable almost as-is. However, please read and try to understand the entire corresponding section before applying the template - the information presented is valuable for daily operation and troubleshooting.

Radiator

Radiator is perhaps the most popular server software in eduroam federations. The config file and examples below assume deployment on a UNIX-like platform, such as Linux or FreeBSD. Radiator can also be used on Windows; in which case you will have to adapt some path names etc.

Use of IP addresses in this document

The IPv4 and IPv6 addresses below are in the IETF "documentation" prefix ranges - you will need to adapt the addresses for your production use.

Version information

This section of the document was created and is verified to work with at least

  • Radiator 4.7
  • Net::SSLeay 1.37 [prerelease]
  • Perl 5.10

It is usually safe to assume that newer versions of these programs work as well.

Net::SSLeay 1.37 is the minimum required version for the RADIUS/TLS parts of the config to work completely: the version is needed for the TLS_PolicyOID configuration parameter to work (which is needed for RADIUS/TLS server authorisation checks).

With currently only one CA exclusively issuing eduroam server certificates, the TLS_PolicyOID check is not essential right now.

It is thus also safe to use version 1.36 (and commenting out the configuration lines regarding TLS_PolicyOID). You should upgrade to 1.37 as soon as it is publicly released and re-enable the parameter in the configuration.

Installation

Base configuration / logging / F-Ticks

Radiator expects the configuration to be in file /etc/radiator/radius.cfg.

The parameter LogDir defines the directory in which start-up logs and PID file reside. DbDir defines the path to Radiator's data files, such as dictionaries.

LogDir    /var/log/radiator
DbDir     /usr/share/radiator

Throughout the configuration file, you may want to use DNS names instead of IP addresses. For RADIUS/TLS with dynamic discovery, it is even required to use DNS. The configuration for DNS is as follows (replace the IP addresses with your own):

<Resolver>
        Nameservers     198.51.100.254
        Nameservers     2001:db8:100::254
        NAPTR-Pattern x-eduroam:(radius)\.(tls)
        DirectAddressLookup 0
        # Debug
</Resolver>

The logs during normal operation are defined separately in <Log> stanzas. The verbosity of logging depends on the Trace level in the configuration: Trace 3 logs are recommended for normal operation, while Trace 4 logs provide verbosity for debugging, if needed. You can define several <Log> instances with different destinations. Let's define logging to syslog with verbosity level 3, and logging to a file for debugging purposes with verbosity level 4. We also define that the log file name changes on a daily basis to enable easy deletion of old files:

<Log SYSLOG>
      Facility      local7
      Identifier    log-syslog
      Trace         3
</Log>

<Log FILE>
      Filename      /var/log/radiator/radiator.%Y%m%d.log
      Identifier    log-file
      Trace         4
</Log>

 You can also log authentication events in one line per authentication separately. The eduroam statistics system, F-Ticks, makes use of that feature. The F-Ticks logging facility is defined as follows:

<AuthLog SYSLOG>
        Identifier TICKS
        LogSuccess 1
        LogFailure 1
        LogSock udp
        LogHost 198.51.100.253
        SuccessFormat F-TICKS/eduroam/1.0#REALM=%R#VISCOUNTRY=%{eduroam-SP-Country}#VISINST=%{Operator-Name}#CSI=%{Calling-Station-Id}#RESULT=OK#
        FailureFormat F-TICKS/eduroam/1.0#REALM=%R#VISCOUNTRY=%{eduroam-SP-Country}#VISINST=%{Operator-Name}#CSI=%{Calling-Station-Id}#RESULT=FAIL#
</AuthLog>

Here, you need to adapt LogHost to the eduroam F-Ticks logging server (whose address you'll receive from eduroam operations), and the attribute marked with read. Its contents will become clearer later in the configuration file. Note: on some versions of Sys::Syslog and Radiator, you may need to replace "udp" with "inet".

If you monitor your national infrastructure, you will probably have automatic authentications happening which are triggered by your monitoring. F-Ticks can automatically separate these from real-world traffic and keep it out of the statistics. For that to work, you will have to use a value for Calling-Station-ID in your monitoring requests which begins with 22-44-66.

Next, the ports Radiator will use to listen for Authentication and Accounting requests must be defined. The port numbers 1812 and 1813 were assigned to the RADIUS protocol by IANA. Note: Exceptionally, you may come across very old RADIUS equipment which uses non-standard ports 1645 and 1646. Please see the Radiator documentation how to handle these, or consider upgrading the corresponding equipment.

AuthPort    1812
AcctPort    1813

Client definition

In the client section, all possible peers from which the FLR server is going to accept requests, are listed. I.e. it includes all eduroam SPs in the federation and the uplink to the other federations (in Europe, to the ETLR servers).

For RADIUS, individual clients with their IP address have to be listed and a "secret" has to be assigned to them. As this secret is the only thing that protects the communication between the RADIUS servers from eavesdropping, it must be cryptographically strong (suggested: exactly 16 characters) and well protected.

The clients should also be tagged with the attribute Operator-Name. which takes the format "1<domainname>", and for F-Ticks classification reasons, also with the country the eduroam SP is located in (or UNKNOWN for clients whose geographic location isn't known).

Example: you have an eduroam SP which operates on the address 203.0.113.5 and have negotiated the shared secret "adf7856asdcvxb5p" with it. The SP is based in Antarctica, and uses the domain name "foo.aq". You want it to show up in log files as "icecold-radius".

# my eduroam SP in Antarctica

<Client 203.0.113.5>
      Secret                     adf7856asdcvxb5p
      Identifier                 icecold-radius
      AddToRequestIfNotExist     Operator-Name=1foo.aq,eduroam-SP-Country=AQ
      RequireMessageAuthenticator
</Client>

Note: the Operator-Name attribute has the character "1" preceding the domain name. This is intentional and required as per the corresponding RFC. Please always prepend the character "one" to the domain names of the operator.

The clients for your uplink to ETLRs will look similar to the following. Note they are tagged with Country=UNKNOWN because requests coming from these countries can originate from all over the world (they connect all other federations). For the same reason, it also does not make sense to set the Operator-Name attribute.

<Client etlr1.eduroam.org>
      IdenticalClients           etlr2.eduroam.org
      Secret                     (as negotiated with eduroam OT)
      Identifier                 etlr1.eduroam.org
      AddToRequestIfNotExist     eduroam-SP-Country=UNKNOWN
      RequireMessageAuthenticator
</Client>

Two additional clients are useful: one client for localhost, which can be used for local debugging purposes (and which doesn't need a strong secret); and the client which used for European FLR monitoring (negotiate the actual client address eduroam OT) at

<Client 192.0.2.1>
        Secret                 (as negotiated with eduroam OT)
        Identifier             Monitoring-ETLR
        AddToRequestIfNotExist eduroam-SP-Country=NONE
        RequireMessageAuthenticator
</Client>

<Client localhost>
        Secret                   mysecret
        DupInterval              0
        AddToRequestIfNotExist   eduroam-SP-Country=NONE
        RequireMessageAuthenticator
</Client>

Note: all the Identifier names in the configuration need to be unique, and should be meaningful to you, the server operator.

Finally, to enable RADIUS/TLS clients to communicate with your server, you need an additional section for RADIUS/TLS like the following. Replace your server's IP address(es) and paths to the certificate files as necessary - please refer to the "Certificates" section for details on how to obtain and manage RADIUS/TLS certificates.

<ServerRADSEC>
        Port                   2083
        BindAddress            198.51.100.252, ipv6:2001:db8:1::26
        Secret                 radsec
        Protocol               tcp      
        UseTLS
        TLS_CAPath             /etc/radiator/certs/CAs/current/
        TLS_CertificateFile    /etc/radiator/certs/server.pem
        TLS_CertificateType    PEM
        TLS_PrivateKeyFile     /etc/radiator/certs/server.key
        TLS_PolicyOID          1.3.6.1.4.1.25178.3.1.1
        TLS_RequireClientCert
        Identifier             RadSec
        AddToRequest           eduroam-SP-Country=UNKNOWN
</ServerRADSEC>

Request forwarding

Your eduroam IdPs

eduroam authentication requests are routed based on the User-Name attribute in the request. Radiator will extract the realm from the User-Name attribute. Radiator uses <Handler> definitions for routing decisions. Even though routing may seem straight-forward since it is based on a single string, it is unfortunately easy to introduce routing loops. Therefore, special care should be taken to prevent this. There are several approaches to that. The one presented here involves regular expressions. The following example shows these, based on the hyptothetical eduroam IdP realm "foo.aq" in Antarctica, and one authoritative RADIUS server for this realm. That same IdP is also an SP and could originate requests. The handler will then look like the following:

<Handler Realm=/^foo\.aq$/i,Client-Identifier=/^(?!icecold-radius$)/>
      <AuthBy RADIUS>
                DisableMTUDiscovery
                RetryTimeout          3
                Retries               1
                FailureBackoffTime    300	# (adjust after own needs)
                UseExtendedIds
                <Host 203.0.113.54>
                          AuthPort           1812
                          AcctPort           1813
                          Secret             xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                </Host>
      </AuthBy>
      AuthLog TICKS
      AuthLog defaultAuthLog
</Handler>

Note the regular expression: it matches only exactly "foo.aq" - not "barfoo.aq" or "foo.aqx". It also contains a safety measure: since the FLR operator can make the link that the realm "foo.aq" is colocated with a eduroam SP whose Client Identifier is "icecold-radius", it can spot that there must be an error if requests for the realm "foo.aq" leave the server in question. Therefore, the Handler clause will only match if the Client-Identifier is NOT "icecold-radius".

If the eduroam IdP provides multiple servers for resiliency reasons, you can specify this in the Handler as well. Please consult the Radiator manual for further details.

Handlers are evaluated in-order, so you should list all known eduroam IdPs one after another in one big block.

You should also add several "catch-all" realms for unknown realms. They are listed below.

Handling empty realms

Empty realms means User-Name requests that do not carry the @... suffix. In a well-behaved eduroam IdP, empty realms should not reach the FLR server (they would be discarded by the IdP already), but if they do, this following realm definition will catch them and reject the request. A reply will be added to the rejected requests explaining the reason for rejection. Replace <TLD> with the federation top-level domain you are authoritative for.

<Handler Realm=/^$/>
      AccountingHandled
      <AuthBy INTERNAL>
           DefaultResult REJECT
		   RejectReason Misconfigured client: empty realm! Rejected by <TLD>.
	  </AuthBy>
      RejectHasReason
      AuthLog defaultAuthLog
</Handler>

Unknown realms in the own federation

As the FLR server, your server needs to provide authoritative answers for all possible realms under your TLD. This means that all unknown realms need to be rejected by your server. Failure to do so may lead to routing loops! 

Add the following stanza (after your Handler sections for valid realms!) to catch and reject all unknown realms that end in your own TLD (obviously replacing the term TLD with your top-level domain):

<Handler Realm=/.*\.tld$/i>
      AccountingHandled
      <AuthBy INTERNAL>
           DefaultResult REJECT
		   RejectReason Misconfigured supplicant or downstream server: uses non-existing realm in <TLD> federation!
	  </AuthBy>
	  RejectHasReason
      AuthLog TICKS
      AuthLog defaultAuthLog
</Handler>

Other known-bad realms

In general, no further second-guessing of incoming realm names should be done. New federations join eduroam every once in a while, and some connected IdPs may reside under "surprising" TLDs (such as .com). That is not a reason to hard-codedly reject all these realms.

However, there are some few well-known, bad, realms that can safely be filtered. The following entry is such an example. For all other realms, please consult the eduroam OT before applying any rejection rules.

One such invalid realm is seen quite often due to supplicant misconfiguration: myabc.com (this is the default realm in an unconfigured Intel PRO/Set Wireless supplicant). The following stanza rejects this realm with an appropriate error message and blindly acknowledges all Accounting requests.

<Handler Realm=/myabc\.com$/i>
      AccountingHandled
      <AuthBy INTERNAL>
           DefaultResult REJECT
		   RejectReason Misconfigured client: default realm of Intel PRO/Wireless supplicant!  Rejected by <TLD>.
	  </AuthBy>
	  RejectHasReason
      AuthLog TICKS
      AuthLog defaultAuthLog
</Handler>

Realms from other federations

This is the last Handler rule: it forwards all requests that haven't matched any previous Handler and determines the routing destination. It will first attempt to discover whether there is a direct RADIUS/TLS soute to the destination realm's server, and if not, route the request to the ETLRs.

<Handler User-Name = /\@/>
        <AuthBy DNSROAM>
                Port                2083
                Protocol            radsec
                Transport           tcp
                UseTLS              1
                Secret              radsec
                ReconnectTimeout    1
                NoreplyTimeout      5
                ConnectOnDemand
                TLS_CAPath          /etc/radiator/certs/CAs/current/
                TLS_CertificateFile /etc/radiator/certs/server.pem
                TLS_CertificateType PEM
                TLS_PrivateKeyFile  /etc/radiator/certs/server.key
                TLS_PolicyOID       1.3.6.1.4.1.25178.3.1.2
                TLS_ExpectedPeerName CN=.*
                <Route>
                        Realm DEFAULT
                        Address etlr1.eduroam.org
                        Port 2083
                        Transport tcp
                        Protocol radsec
                </Route>
        </AuthBy>
        AuthLog TICKS
</Handler>

Replace your paths to the certificate files as necessary - please refer to the "Certificates" section for details on how to obtain and manage RADIUS/TLS certificates.

Goodies

Local logging of auths in one line

It is useful to log each authentication locally, with more detail than is needed for F-Ticks. We suggest using the following log definition – it generates one single line of log output per authentication, which is very parser-friendly if logs need to be evaluated later: 

<AuthLog SYSLOG>
        Identifier            defaultAuthLog
        Facility              local7
        LogIdent              radiator
        FailureFormat         Access-Reject for %u (User-Name=%{Reply:User-Name}) at Proxy=%c (CSI=%{Calling-Station-Id}NAS=%{NAS-Identifier}/%N)
        SuccessFormat         Access-Accept for %u (User-Name=%{Reply:User-Name}) at Proxy=%c (CSI=%{Calling-Station-Id}NAS=%{NAS-Identifier}/%N) EAP=%{HexAddress:EAP-Message}
        LogSuccess            1
        LogFailure            1
</AuthLog>

SNMP

You may want to configure SNMP access to your server. SNMP allows remote monitoring of activity on a RADIUS server with tools such as RADAR from OSC (http://www.open.com.au/radar/index.html), or drawing simple graphs of activity by rgraph from CESNET (http://www.eduroam.cz/rgraph/).

<SNMPAgent>
      ROCommunity xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
      Managers        localhost 127.0.0.1
</SNMPAgent>

Caveats

The previous sections have referenced two specific RADIUS attributes, "Operator-Name" and "eduroam-SP-Country". In Radiator 4.7, these attributes aren't shipped by default and need to be registered in the server's so-called "dictionary".

Operator-Name, and a few more attributes, is defined in the IETF document RFC5580. The definitions in there are canonical, but they clash with the dictionary that's shipped with Radiator, so you will have to remove a few bogus entries, and then add the correct definitions. Please open the file "dictionary" and make the following edits:

Delete the following bogus entries near line 230 of the dictionary file:

ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Route-Preference         126     integer
ATTRIBUTE       Tunneling-Protocol              127     integer
ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Shared-Profile-Enable    128     integer
ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Primary-Home-Agent       129     string
ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Secondary-Home-Agent     130     string
ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Dialout-Allowed          131     integer
ATTRIBUTE       Ascend-Client-Gateway           132     ipaddr

Replace them with the following definitions:

ATTRIBUTE       Operator-Name                   126     string
ATTRIBUTE       Location-Information            127     string
ATTRIBUTE       Location-Data                   128     string
ATTRIBUTE       Basic-Location-Policy-Rules     129     string
ATTRIBUTE       Extended-Location-Policy-Rules  130     string
ATTRIBUTE       Location-Capable                131     integer
ATTRIBUTE       Requested-Location-Info         132     integer

The attribute eduroam-SP-Country is a custom extension, a so-called "vendor-specific" attribute. It is registered under the namespace of TERENA. Please add the following definition at the end of the dictionary file if you use a version of Radiator BEFORE 4.9 with the patchset of 04 April 2012. For newer versions of Radiator, this attribute is already shipped by default with the server and you do not have to change anything.

# TERENA VSAs
#
VENDOR      TERENA      25178
VENDORATTR  25178       eduroam-SP-Country              10      string


radsecproxy

This section describes how to set up radsecproxy to act as a federation-level RADIUS and RADIUS/TLS server. It can then completely replace other RADIUS server products on the federation level.

More precisely, it will enable a server to:

  • Accept requests from connected service providers via RADIUS and RADIUS/TLS.
  • Forward requests to connected identity providers via RADIUS and RADIUS/TLS.
  • Forward requests from international visitors to the European eduroam confederation root servers via RADIUS/TLS.
  • Accept requests from the root servers via RADIUS/TLS for the own federation's users when they are roaming in another federation.

Version information

The prerequisites for this deployment are:

  • radsecproxy version 1.6 or higher
  • A server certificate and a private key for that certificate to establish the RADIUS/TLS connection which designates the server as an IdP+SP.

Installation

On UNIX-like systems, the installation is very simple:

  1. Download the code from GitHub https://radsecproxy.github.io/.

  2. Unpack the code.
  3. Navigate into the unpacked directory (the base directory)
  4. type the usual UNIX compilation sequence:   
./configure
make
make check
make install

      4.  After compiling and installing, the executable

radsecproxy

       is in the installed directory. Execution of the installed binaries does not require root rights.

      5. Copy the template configuration file below into

/etc/radsecproxy.conf

      6.  Create the directory /etc/radsecproxy/certs/ca/. The template configuration file requires this directory to contain the accredited CA root certificates and the corresponding Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) in their OpenSSL hash form. See this section for information about the CA download
      7. Fill the lines marked with _STUFF_ with the required information as explained below.
      8. Start radsecproxy and enjoy (for first-time use, starting it with the -f option is recommended, it will start radsecproxy in the foreground and show some verbose startup messages).

Sample config file

Most of the radsecproxy configuration file is static. This walk-through goes through the template radsecproxy.conf line by line and explains the meaning of each stanza.

ListenUDP                 *:1812
ListenTCP                 *:2083

radsecproxy will receive requests from all connected Service Providers via both RADIUS and RadSec. Therefore it has to listen on the appropriate ports on its network interfaces (the * meaning: all interfaces). If you want radsecproxy to listen only on specific interfaces, enter the interface names here. Beware: in this case you may also have to set the more exotic options SourceUDP and/or SourceTCP (see the man page of radsecproxy for details).

Local Logging

A logging level of 3 is the default and recommended log level. Radsecproxy will then log successful and failed authentications on one line each. The log destination is the local syslog destination.

LogLevel                3
LogDestination          x-syslog:///LOG_LOCAL0


radsecproxy features a semi-automatic prevention of routing loops for RADIUS connections. If you define a client and server block (see below) and give them the same descriptive name, the proxy will prevent proxying from the client to that same server. Turn this feature on with:

LoopPrevention         On

F-Ticks

If you use Radsecproxy, you should send basic statistical information about the number of logins for national and international roaming to the eduroam Operations Team. The system to do that is "F-Ticks". radsecproxy has built-in support for F-Ticks: you simply add an option to all client { } definitions for which you know the country they are physically located in. That typically means all your connected institutions' RADIUS clients, at the national level, but excludes the international roaming top-level servers (e.g. the European Top-Level RADIUS Servers). For an institution it means all your WLAN controller connections. The client definition examples below assume that you do use F-Ticks.

When the client definitions are set-up, the following options enable F-Ticks and send the syslog messages in a privacy-preserving way (by hashing parts of the connecting end-user device's MAC address:

FTicksReporting Full
FTicksMAC VendorKeyHashed
FTicksKey arandomsalt

The ticks will end up in your local syslog daemon; they are NOT automatically sent forward to eduroam Operations. It will depend on your syslog configuration how to achieve forwarding of the messages. For "rsyslog", a popular recent syslog daemon, the following settings will make it work:

# radsecproxy

if ($programname == 'radsecproxy') and ($msg contains 'F-TICKS') \
then @192.0.2.204
& ~

As usual, the IP address above is NOT the actual destination for the eduroam Operations F-Ticks server. Please contact eduroam OT for the the IP address of their server. Also keep your own server's IP address handy, because the F-Ticks server is firewalled to accept ticks only from known sources.

RADIUS/TLS

The following two sections define which TLS certificates should be used by default. This installation of radsecproxy always uses the same certificates, so this is the only TLS section. CACertificatePath contains the eduroam-accredited CA certificates with filenames in the OpenSSL hash form. The parameters below need to be adapted to point to your server certificate in PEM format, the private key for this certificate and the password for this private key if needed, respectively. If no password is needed for the private key, you can comment this line (precede it with a # sign). The option CRLCheck validates certificates against the Certificate Revocation List (CRL) of the CAs. It requires a valid CRL in place, or else the certificate validation will fail. Therefore, it is important to regularly update the CRLs by re-downloading them as described above.

Right now, checking CRLs is discouraged due to a pending bug in OpenSSL regarding CRL reloading.

Replace your paths to the certificate files as necessary - please refer to the "Certificates" section for details on how to obtain and manage RADIUS/TLS certificates.

tls defaultClient {
    CACertificatePath                   /etc/radsecproxy/certs/ca/
    CertificateFile                     /etc/radsecproxy/certs/CERT_PEM__
    CertificateKeyFile                  /etc/radsecproxy/certs/CERT_KEY__
    CertificateKeyPassword              __CERT_PASS__
    policyOID                           1.3.6.1.4.1.25178.3.1.1
#    CRLCheck                            On
}

tls defaultServer {
    CACertificatePath                   /etc/radsecproxy/certs/ca/
    CertificateFile                     /etc/radsecproxy/certs/CERT_PEM__
    CertificateKeyFile                  /etc/radsecproxy/certs/CERT_KEY__
    CertificateKeyPassword              __CERT_PASS__
    policyOID                           1.3.6.1.4.1.25178.3.1.2
#    CRLCheck                            On
}

The following section deletes attributes from RADIUS requests that convey VLAN assignment information. If VLAN information is sent inadvertently, it can cause a degraded or non-existent service for the end user because he might be put into the wrong VLAN. Connected service providers should filter this attribute on their own. Connected Identity Providers should not send this attribute at all. Checking for the existence of these attributes on your server is just an optional additional safety layer. If you do have a roaming use for cross-institution VLAN assignment, you may want to delete this stanza.

rewrite defaultClient {
     removeAttribute                       64
     removeAttribute                       65
     removeAttribute                       81
}

Client definition

client 127.0.0.1 {
        type     udp
        secret   testing123
}

client ::1 {
        type     udp
        secret   testing123
}

There is no other RADIUS server running on localhost, which makes these client definitions almost superfluous. They may be of some use however to initiate debugging requests and tests from the server itself, so it is considered good practice to list localhost as a client. If your system is not IPv6-enabled, simply delete the second stanza.

client __SP_IP_ADDR__ {
        type     udp
        secret   __SP_SECRET__
        FTicksVISCOUNTRY XZ 		# will generate F-Ticks for a non-existant visited country
 }

Stanzas like this one are used for each connected service provider that is connected via RADIUS. You need to know the IP address of every SP's RADIUS server and negotiate a shared secret with the SP

Please note that the client and server stanza for the GEANT Monitoring (SA3-T2 activity) have the same host address, but different stanza names. This is important: it disables the LoopDetection for this host, and the SA3 monitoring deliberate uses loops to do its tests. The following stanza is the eduroam Service Activity's monitoring client. Negotiate the IP address and shared secret for European monitoring with the operators in SA3-T2 (eduroam Operational Team) and enter it here.

client SA3-monitoring-incoming {
         host            x.y.z.a
         type            UDP
         secret          __MONITORING_SECRET__
}

.

client incoming {
        host                              0.0.0.0/0
        host                              [::]/0
        type                              TLS
        tls                               defaultClient
        secret                            radsec
}


After all specific clients in the configuration, you can the above stanza as a "catch-all" for incoming RADIUS/TLS connections.It does not need to be modified (if you do not support IPv6, you can delete the second "host" line though). In particular, the string "radsec" for secret is fixed by the RADIUS/TLS protocol and is required to remain unchanged. It also has no effect; RADIUS/TLS depends on TLS security rather than the shared RADIUS secret.

The eduroam trust model requires that a SP that tries to connect has:

  • A X.509 certificate from an eduroam-accredited CA
  • which carries a Policy OID as configured above to prove authorisation as a eduroam Service Provider

These checks were defined via "tls defaultClient", above.

Request forwarding

To deliver requests to your connected IdPs, their servers need to be configured. This stanza is for IdP servers using RADIUS.

server __DESCRIPTIVE_NAME_ {
          host     __IP_ADDR__
          type     UDP
          secret   __SERVER_SECRET__
}

This is the equivalent stanza for IdP servers using RADIUS/TLS.

server __RADSEC_PEER_DNS_NAME_ {
          type         TLS
          tls          defaultServer
          secret       radsec
          statusserver on
}

The two following stanzas define the uplink to the European eduroam Confederation root servers. This entry can be kept as it stands and doesn't need any further configuration.

server etlr1.eduroam.org {
          type                  TLS
          tls                   defaultServer
          secret                radsec
          statusserver          on
}

server etlr2.eduroam.org {
          type                  TLS
          tls                   defaultServer
          secret                radsec
          statusserver          on
}

European monitoring works both ways. The client entry near the beginning of the configuration file was needed for incoming requests from the monitoring servers. The entry below specifies the outgoing connections to the monitoring server. Outgoing connections are currently monitored with RADIUS only. Use the negotiated IP address and shared secret with SA3-T2 Monitoring in the following stanza:

server SA3-monitoring-outgoing {
          host                  a.b.c.d
          type                  UDP
          secret                __MONITORING_SECRET__
}

After defining the server configurations, we need to define which RADIUS realms are going to be forwarded to which server(s). This is done in the remainder of the configuration file.

First, there are (very few) known-bad realms which are not forwarded at all. They should ideally never reach the FLR server, and be caught by the SP local RADIUS server, but as an extra safety measure they are filtered (i.e. immediately rejected) here:

realm /myabc\.com$/ {
          replymessage "Misconfigured client: default realm of Intel PRO/Wireless supplicant! Rejected by <TLD>."
          accountingresponse on
}

realm /@.*3gppnetwork\.org$/ {
		  replymessage "Misconfigured client: Unsupported 3G EAP-SIM client!"
		  accountingresponse on
}

realm /^$/ {
          replymessage "Misconfigured client: empty realm! Rejected by <TLD>."
          accountingresponse on
}

Note: if you need to blacklist an existing realm for some reason, you can follow the myabc.com example, copying and replacing it with the realm to be blacklisted.

Requests for proper realms that are coming in from upstream and are supposed to be handled by an identity provider are listed in stanzas like the below. _IDP_REALM_ contains the realm of the connected IdP. Create one such stanza for each IdP realm. If an IdP has multiple servers for a failover configuration, you can list all servers in a row, as in the example below.

realm /IDP_REALM$/ {
              server         __FROM_SERVER_STANZAS_ABOVE__
              server         __BACKUP_NAME__
}

The configuration stanza below is for outgoing European monitoring connections.

realm /eduroam\.YOUR_TLD/ {
              server         SA3-monitoring-outgoing
}

All the valid realms were listed earlier in the configuration file, and this server is authoritative for the own TLD. If a supplicant or downstream servers sends a realm with the own TLD, but also with a realm name that is not registered, this request is unauthorised and bound to fail. It will be rejected immediately to prevent routing loops.

realm /\.YOUR_TLD$/ {
              replymessage "Misconfigured supplicant or downstream server: uses known-bad realm in <TLD> federation!"
}

Finally, all realms that do not belong to the own federation are forwarded to the European eduroam Confederation root servers. However, we limit this to 'sane' realms: these must include a tld of at least 2 characters. Anything else is dropped.

realm /@.+\..{2,}$/ {
              server           etlr1.eduroam.org
              server           etlr2.eduroam.org
}

realm * {
			  replymessage "Misconfigured client: username does not contain a valid realm!"
}

Goodies

This section contains some optional configuration parameters that can do good in many cases.

Keeping the config file at a manageable size

radsecproxy allows to split the configuration file into several files on disk and include the parts into the main configuration file. This is very practical when many sites have to be managed. You can create a subdir and put the client, server, realm parts together in one file per participant. By adding

include /etc/radsecproxy.conf.d/*.conf

into the main config file, you can put all the participant files into that directory.

Caveats

FreeRADIUS 3 - RADSEC

This section describes how to set up FreeRADIUS to handle RADSEC as a federation-level RADIUS and RADIUS/TLS server. It can then completely replace other RADSEC proxy products on the federation level (i.e. if you already have FreeRADIUS you can simply activate this virtual server and you'll be able to handle RADSEC - RADIUS/TLS over TCP).

More precisely, it will enable a server to:

  • Accept requests from connected service providers via RADIUS/TLS over TCP.
  • Forward requests to connected identity providers via RADIUS/TLS over TCP.
  • Forward requests from international visitors to the European eduroam confederation root servers via RADIUS/TLS over TCP.
  • Accept requests from the root servers via RADIUS/TLS over TCP for the own federation's users when they are roaming in another federation.

Version information

The prerequisites for this deployment are:

  • FreeRADIUS version 3.0.0 or higher
  • A server certificate and a private key for that certificate to establish the RadSec connection which designates the server as an IdP+SP.

Sample config file

All of the RADSEC configuration for FreeRADIUS 3.x can be in a single virtual server file. A detailed explanation of this configuration file is not yet provided. However, the comments included in the file should make its action almost self- explanatory. This means you can start and experiment with it right after installation.

Installation

Simply copy and paste this code into a new virtual server e.g. eduroam-radsec and place into your $RADDB/sites-enabled directory

listen {
	ipaddr = *
	port = 2083
	type = auth

	# For now, only TCP transport is allowed.
	proto = tcp

	clients = radsec

	#  This is *exactly* the same configuration as used by the EAP-TLS
	#  module.  It's OK for testing, but for production use it's a good
	#  idea to use different server certificates for EAP and for RADIUS
	#  transport.
	tls {
		#  These are used to simplify later configurations.
		certdir = ${confdir}/radsec
		cadir = ${confdir}/radsec

		private_key_password = whatever
		private_key_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-key.pem

		#  If Private key & Certificate are located in
		#  the same file, then private_key_file &
		#  certificate_file must contain the same file
		#  name.
		#
		#  If CA_file (below) is not used, then the
		#  certificate_file below MUST include not
		#  only the server certificate, but ALSO all
		#  of the CA certificates used to sign the
		#  server certificate.
		certificate_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-eduPKI.pem

		#  Trusted Root CA list
		#
		#  ALL of the CA's in this list will be trusted
		#  to issue client certificates for authentication.
		#
		#  In general, you should use self-signed
		#  certificates for 802.1x (EAP) authentication.
		#  In that case, this CA file should contain
		#  *one* CA certificate.
		#
		#  This parameter is used only for EAP-TLS,
		#  when you issue client certificates.  If you do
		#  not use client certificates, and you do not want
		#  to permit EAP-TLS authentication, then delete
		#  this configuration item.
		CA_file = ${cadir}/eduPKI-CA.crt

		#
		#  For DH cipher suites to work, you have to
		#  run OpenSSL to create the DH file first:
		#
		#  	openssl dhparam -out certs/dh 1024
		#
		dh_file = ${certdir}/dh
		random_file = ${certdir}/random

		#
		#  This can never exceed the size of a RADIUS
		#  packet (4096 bytes), and is preferably half
		#  that, to accomodate other attributes in
		#  RADIUS packet.  On most APs the MAX packet
		#  length is configured between 1500 - 1600
		#  In these cases, fragment size should be
		#  1024 or less.
		#
		fragment_size = 1024

		#  include_length is a flag which is
		#  by default set to yes If set to
		#  yes, Total Length of the message is
		#  included in EVERY packet we send.
		#  If set to no, Total Length of the
		#  message is included ONLY in the
		#  First packet of a fragment series.
		#
		include_length = yes

		#  Check the Certificate Revocation List
		#
		#  1) Copy CA certificates and CRLs to same directory.
		#  2) Execute 'c_rehash <CA certs&CRLs Directory>'.
		#    'c_rehash' is OpenSSL's command.
		#  3) uncomment the line below.
		#  5) Restart radiusd
	        #	check_crl = yes
	        #	CA_path = ${cadir}

	       #
	       #  If check_cert_issuer is set, the value will
	       #  be checked against the DN of the issuer in
	       #  the client certificate.  If the values do not
	       #  match, the cerficate verification will fail,
	       #  rejecting the user.
	       #
	       #  In 2.1.10 and later, this check can be done
	       #  more generally by checking the value of the
	       #  TLS-Client-Cert-Issuer attribute.  This check
	       #  can be done via any mechanism you choose.
	       #
               # this doesnt work yet
	       # check_cert_issuer = "/DC=org/DC=edupki/CN=eduPKI"

	       #
	       #  If check_cert_cn is set, the value will
	       #  be xlat'ed and checked against the CN
	       #  in the client certificate.  If the values
	       #  do not match, the certificate verification
	       #  will fail rejecting the user.
	       #
	       #  This check is done only if the previous
	       #  "check_cert_issuer" is not set, or if
	       #  the check succeeds.
	       #
	       #  In 2.1.10 and later, this check can be done
	       #  more generally by checking the value of the
	       #  TLS-Client-Cert-CN attribute.  This check
	       #  can be done via any mechanism you choose.
	       #
	       #	check_cert_cn = %{User-Name}
	       #
               # Set this option to specify the allowed
		# TLS cipher suites.  The format is listed
		# in "man 1 ciphers".
		cipher_list = "DEFAULT"

		#

		#  This configuration entry should be deleted
		#  once the server is running in a normal
		#  configuration.  It is here ONLY to make
		#  initial deployments easier.
		#
		#
		#  This is enabled in eap.conf, so we don't need it here.
		#
#		make_cert_command = "${certdir}/bootstrap"

		#
		#  Session resumption / fast reauthentication
		#  cache.
		#
		#  The cache contains the following information:
		#
		#  session Id - unique identifier, managed by SSL
		#  User-Name  - from the Access-Accept
		#  Stripped-User-Name - from the Access-Request
		#  Cached-Session-Policy - from the Access-Accept
		#
		#  The "Cached-Session-Policy" is the name of a
		#  policy which should be applied to the cached
		#  session.  This policy can be used to assign
		#  VLANs, IP addresses, etc.  It serves as a useful
		#  way to re-apply the policy from the original
		#  Access-Accept to the subsequent Access-Accept
		#  for the cached session.
		#
		#  On session resumption, these attributes are
		#  copied from the cache, and placed into the
		#  reply list.
		#
		#  You probably also want "use_tunneled_reply = yes"
		#  when using fast session resumption.
		#
		cache {
		      #
		      #  Enable it.  The default is "no".
		      #  Deleting the entire "cache" subsection
		      #  Also disables caching.
		      #
		      #  You can disallow resumption for a
		      #  particular user by adding the following
		      #  attribute to the control item list:
		      #
		      #		Allow-Session-Resumption = No
		      #
		      #  If "enable = no" below, you CANNOT
		      #  enable resumption for just one user
		      #  by setting the above attribute to "yes".
		      #
		      enable = yes

		      #
		      #  Lifetime of the cached entries, in hours.
		      #  The sessions will be deleted after this
		      #  time.
		      #
		      lifetime = 24 # hours

		      #
		      #  The maximum number of entries in the
		      #  cache.  Set to "0" for "infinite".
		      #
		      #  This could be set to the number of users
		      #  who are logged in... which can be a LOT.
		      #
		      max_entries = 255
		}

		#
		#  Require a client certificate.
		#
		require_client_cert = yes

		#
		#  As of version 2.1.10, client certificates can be
		#  validated via an external command.  This allows
		#  dynamic CRLs or OCSP to be used.
		#
		#  This configuration is commented out in the
		#  default configuration.  Uncomment it, and configure
		#  the correct paths below to enable it.
		#
		verify {
			#  A temporary directory where the client
			#  certificates are stored.  This directory
			#  MUST be owned by the UID of the server,
			#  and MUST not be accessible by any other
			#  users.  When the server starts, it will do
			#  "chmod go-rwx" on the directory, for
			#  security reasons.  The directory MUST
			#  exist when the server starts.
			#
			#  You should also delete all of the files
			#  in the directory when the server starts.
	     		tmpdir = /etc/raddb/temporary

			#  The command used to verify the client cert.
			#  We recommend using the OpenSSL command-line
			#  tool.
			#
			#  The ${..CA_path} text is a reference to
			#  the CA_path variable defined above.
			#
			#  The %{TLS-Client-Cert-Filename} is the name
			#  of the temporary file containing the cert
			#  in PEM format.  This file is automatically
			#  deleted by the server when the command
			#  returns.

			# this doesnt work yet either
	    		#client = "/usr/bin/openssl verify -CAfile /etc/raddb/radsec/eduPKI-CA.crt -purpose crlsign  %{TLS-Client-Cert-Filename}"
		}
	}
}

# IPv6 listener - config comments cleared for brevity

listen {
	ipv6addr = ::
	port = 2083
	type = auth
	proto = tcp
	clients = radsec

	tls {
		certdir = ${confdir}/radsec
		cadir = ${confdir}/radsec
		private_key_password = whatever
		private_key_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-key.pem
		certificate_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-eduPKI.pem
		CA_file = ${cadir}/eduPKI-CA.crt
		dh_file = ${certdir}/dh
		random_file = ${certdir}/random
		fragment_size = 1024
		include_length = yes
                # this doesnt work yet
                # check_cert_issuer = "/DC=org/DC=edupki/CN=eduPKI"

		cipher_list = "DEFAULT"
		cache {
		      enable = yes
		      max_entries = 255
		}
		require_client_cert = yes
		verify {
			tmpdir = /etc/raddb/temporary
			# doesnt work yet
			#client = "/usr/bin/openssl verify -CAfile /etc/raddb/radsec/eduPKI-CA.crt -purpose crlsign  %{TLS-Client-Cert-Filename}"
		}
	}
}

clients radsec {
	client 127.0.0.1 {
		ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
		proto = tcp
		secret = testing123
	}
	client etlr1.eduroam.org {
		ipaddr = 192.87.106.34
		proto = tcp
		secret = radsec
	}
        client etlr2.eduroam.org {
		ipaddr = 130.225.242.109
		proto = tcp
		secret = radsec
# IPv6 for ETRL too - unfamiliar with details, so commented out
#	client etlr1-v6.eduroam.org {
#		ipv6addr = ?????????????????????????????
#		proto = tcp
#		secret = radsec
#	}
#       client etlr2-v6.eduroam.org {
#               ipv6addr = ?????????????????????????????
#               proto = tcp
#               secret = radsec
#       }

}


# local test listener for debug (present by default)
listen {
       ipaddr = 127.0.0.1
       port = 4000
       type = auth
}

home_server etlr1 {
	ipaddr etlr1.eduroam.org
	port = 2083
	type = auth
	secret = radsec
	proto = tcp
	status_check = status-server

	tls {
		#
		#  These are used to simplify later configurations.
		#
		certdir = ${confdir}/radsec
		cadir = ${confdir}/radsec

		private_key_password = whatever
		private_key_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-key.pem

		#  If Private key & Certificate are located in
		#  the same file, then private_key_file &
		#  certificate_file must contain the same file
		#  name.
		#
		#  If CA_file (below) is not used, then the
		#  certificate_file below MUST include not
		#  only the server certificate, but ALSO all
		#  of the CA certificates used to sign the
		#  server certificate.
		certificate_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-eduPKI.pem

		#  Trusted Root CA list
		#
		#  ALL of the CA's in this list will be trusted
		#  to issue client certificates for authentication.
		#
		#  In general, you should use self-signed
		#  certificates for 802.1x (EAP) authentication.
		#  In that case, this CA file should contain
		#  *one* CA certificate.
		#
		#  This parameter is used only for EAP-TLS,
		#  when you issue client certificates.  If you do
		#  not use client certificates, and you do not want
		#  to permit EAP-TLS authentication, then delete
		#  this configuration item.
		CA_file = ${cadir}/eduPKI-CA.crt

		#
		#  For DH cipher suites to work, you have to
		#  run OpenSSL to create the DH file first:
		#
		#  	openssl dhparam -out certs/dh 1024
		#
		dh_file = ${certdir}/dh
		random_file = ${certdir}/random

		#
		#  This can never exceed the size of a RADIUS
		#  packet (4096 bytes), and is preferably half
		#  that, to accomodate other attributes in
		#  RADIUS packet.  On most APs the MAX packet
		#  length is configured between 1500 - 1600
		#  In these cases, fragment size should be
		#  1024 or less.
		#
		fragment_size = 1024

		#  include_length is a flag which is
		#  by default set to yes If set to
		#  yes, Total Length of the message is
		#  included in EVERY packet we send.
		#  If set to no, Total Length of the
		#  message is included ONLY in the
		#  First packet of a fragment series.
		#
		include_length = yes

		#  Check the Certificate Revocation List
		#
		#  1) Copy CA certificates and CRLs to same directory.
		#  2) Execute 'c_rehash <CA certs&CRLs Directory>'.
		#    'c_rehash' is OpenSSL's command.
		#  3) uncomment the line below.
		#  5) Restart radiusd
	#	check_crl = yes
#		CA_path = ${cadir}

	       #
	       #  If check_cert_issuer is set, the value will
	       #  be checked against the DN of the issuer in
	       #  the client certificate.  If the values do not
	       #  match, the cerficate verification will fail,
	       #  rejecting the user.
	       #
	       #  In 2.1.10 and later, this check can be done
	       #  more generally by checking the value of the
	       #  TLS-Client-Cert-Issuer attribute.  This check
	       #  can be done via any mechanism you choose.
	       #
	#       check_cert_issuer = "/C=GB/ST=Berkshire/L=Newbury/O=My Company Ltd"

	       #
	       #  If check_cert_cn is set, the value will
	       #  be xlat'ed and checked against the CN
	       #  in the client certificate.  If the values
	       #  do not match, the certificate verification
	       #  will fail rejecting the user.
	       #
	       #  This check is done only if the previous
	       #  "check_cert_issuer" is not set, or if
	       #  the check succeeds.
	       #
	       #  In 2.1.10 and later, this check can be done
	       #  more generally by checking the value of the
	       #  TLS-Client-Cert-CN attribute.  This check
	       #  can be done via any mechanism you choose.
	       #
	#	check_cert_cn = %{User-Name}
	#
		# Set this option to specify the allowed
		# TLS cipher suites.  The format is listed
		# in "man 1 ciphers".
		cipher_list = "DEFAULT"
	}

}

#second home server config cleared to the values required for brevity

home_server etlr2 {
        ipaddr etlr2.eduroam.org
        port = 2083
        type = auth
        secret = radsec
        proto = tcp
        status_check = status-server

        tls {
                certdir = ${confdir}/radsec
                cadir = ${confdir}/radsec
                private_key_password = whatever
                private_key_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-key.pem
                certificate_file = ${certdir}/server.realm.tld-eduPKI.pem
                CA_file = ${cadir}/eduPKI-CA.crt
                dh_file = ${certdir}/dh
                random_file = ${certdir}/random
                fragment_size = 1024
                include_length = yes
                cipher_list = "DEFAULT"
        }

}


home_server_pool ETLR {
		 type = load-balance
		 home_server = etlr1
		 home_server = etlr2
}

realm eduroam {
      auth_pool = ETLR
}


Caveats

Currently (10th June 2011) there are some bugs with handling unreachable remote proxies which causes the daemon to die. A few of these have already been dealt with via bug reports but some still lurk. Also, the certificate checking/verification code does not currently work - we hope to be able to verify the certificate issuer and OID as we do with RADIATOR and RadSecProxy. Note that this software only does RADSEC/TLS with TCP - DTLS over UDP is not yet an option. Clients are 'radsec' only and the standard naslist or naslist imported from SQL won't operate with radsec.

Gauging your federation's performance

Monitoring

It is important to constantly monitor your infrastructure on all levels, in order to react to system failure and see upcoming problems. There is a multitude of monitoring solutions on the market, and it is not possible to describe ways to monitor eduroam infrastructure for all of them; but we have provided a selection below.

First, for Europe, some parts of monitoring are done by the eduroam Operation Team which we will describe in the following section; please contact your own regional operator for the corresponding monitoring solution in your area if you are operating outside Europe.

In the then-following sections, we provide general tips for infrastructure monitoring.

Federation monitoring in Europe: the eduroam Operational Team

When you set up a federation-level RADIUS server, the OT will start monitoring your server availability and will send out email alerts in case of failure. This is done by the OT sending authentication requests for the special realm @eduroam.<TLD> from their monitoring server to your server, and your server is expected to mirror these back to the OT monitoring infrastructure. The technical set-up of this is described in the corresponding configuration guidelines for federation-level RADIUS servers.

Server availablitity is tested every hour and the results are summarised on the following web page: http://monitor.eduroam.org/

Note that you can also get more detailed info, including a history, by navigating on the left-hand pane on that website.

There is also a more detailed diagnosis test, where a federation operator can request that a specific path (i.e. from federation A via the European root to federation B) is tested real-time on-demand. The web interface for this testing facility is online at: http://monitor.eduroam.org/inter/test_otm.php (access is restricted to eduroam federation operators only).

Monitoring inside the federation

There are several dimensions to infrastructure monitoring; most of which are unrelated to eduroam: system utilisation, hardware health, network reachability, a.s.o. There are many market solutions to monitor these aspects. It is beneficial to use a monitoring solution which can use plugins to execute some more eduroam-specific monitoring. Nagios and its fork Icinga have proven to be valuable to many eduroam participants, and the following plugins are considered useful.

Nagios/Icinga: EAP Login checks

Preparatory work

The tool "rad_eap_test", which is a frontend to wpa_supplicant's "eapol_test", can be used for scripted authentication checks in Nagios. The added value over eapol_test is that eapol_test requires a configuration file on disk by the time of execution. rad_eap_test is completely command-line driven; it generates a temporary configuration file and deletes it again after eapol_test execution.

You can download rad_eap_test from here: http://www.eduroam.cz/rad_eap_test/

It requires eapol_test, part of wpa_supplicant from here: http://hostap.epitest.fi/

To compile eapol_test, unpack the wpa_supplicant distribution, change into the wpa_supplicant/ subdirectory and create the default config file by executing

cp defconfig .config

Then, enable compilation of eapol_test by editing the .config file and setting (i.e. uncommenting)

CONFIG_EAPOL_TEST=y

You can then compile eapol_test with

make eapol_test

Now, you need to tell the shell script rad_eap_test where to find the eapol_test executable; and tell the eduroam F-Ticks system that these are monitoring-only requests by setting a corresponding MAC address. Edit the rad_eap_test file and replace the lines

EAPOL_PROG=<your path to eapol_test here>
MAC="22:44:66:xx:yy:zz" (replace x,y,z with arbitrary values to your liking)

That's it for the prerequisites - we can now start defining Nagios/Icinga checks.

Implementing the checks

You would typically execute the Nagios checks by defining your Nagios server as a client to your FLR server, and send requests for known test accounts of your realms to that server.

You can define check commands like the following:

define command{
        command_name    check_eduroam_login
        command_line    $USER1$/rad_eap_test -H <your FLR hostname> -P 1812 -S <shared secret for your Nagios client> -A $ARG1$ -u $ARG2$ -p $ARG3$ -e $ARG4$ -m WPA-EAP -t 7
}

}

and later use the arguments as follows in your individual checks:

  • ARG1 = anonymous outer identity
  • ARG2 = inner username
  • ARG3 = password
  • ARG4 = EAP type (TTLS/PEAP)

You can also define similar checks for other EAP types; simply execute rad_eap_test without arguments to see which parameters it supports.

Example: You want to test a participating realm foobar.aq which uses PEAP, and for which you have the test credentials "testuser" and "testpass", and you want to test whether anonymous outer identities work properly. The corresponding service check is:

 define service{
        use                             generic-service
        host_name                       <your FLR server>
        service_description             EDUROAM_FOOBAR
        contact_groups                  ...
        check_command                   check_eduroam_login!@foobar.aq!testuser@foobar.aq!testpass!PEAP
        }

Nagios/Icinga: RADIUS/TLS certificate validity checks

You can use the commodity Nagios plugin "check_ssl_cert" from: https://trac.id.ethz.ch/projects/nagios_plugins/wiki/check_ssl_cert&nbsp;for this purpose. The check command is then:

define command {
        command_name = radius_tls
        command_line = $USER1$/check_ssl_cert --host $HOSTADDRESS$ --port 2083 --noauth --warning 14 --critical 3

and will warn you two weeks in advance that your certificate is about to expire when added to the host as a service check.

Statistics

It is also important to measure how successful the service is in your area of responsibility. eduroam Operations has set up a statistics system called F-Ticks, which is able to capture all roaming events both on a national as well as an international level. It does not cover local campus usage though.

If your FLR server is configured to support F-Ticks (it is, if configured according to this cookbook), statistics will be generated automatically for that federation. They are accessible at the following website: http://monitor.eduroam.org/f-ticks/

On that web page, you can find historical evolution of roaming service usage in federations, as well as an overview which realms were most active, and from which countries visitors come from. In the future, detailed views per SP and per IdP can be made available if your federation opts to send the data in the extended detail level. Please contact your federation operator to find out which level of statistics your federation provides.



1 Comment

  1. For more comprehensive nagios-compatible monitoring of RadSec deployments, we created https://github.com/tenet-ac-za/monitoring-plugins/blob/master/check_eduroam_radsec