Cisco Cisco Access Registrar 5.0 Information Guide
Q&A
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Q.
What are the benefits of Cisco Access Registrar?
A.
Cisco Access Registrar delivers a full-featured, customizable RADIUS and Diameter server that focuses service
providers on delivering revenue-generating services. The latest release, Cisco Access Registrar 5.0, provides
functionality to deliver the latest AAA server technology for broadband and mobile wireless networks, wireless
LANs, and public wireless LANs.
Q.
How widely is Cisco Access Registrar deployed?
A.
Cisco Access Registrar is a mature, carrier-class RADIUS and Diameter server that has been deployed
worldwide by numerous large enterprises and service providers, both large and small, since 1998.
Technical Questions
Q.
What hardware specification should I use?
A.
Cisco Access Registrar supports Solaris in a Sun SPARC platform and Linux in an X86 platform. Which product
to choose depends on the customer and the customer’s AAA reqirements. For hardware specifications, please
see the Cisco Access Registrar 5.0 Release Notes.
Q.
What, if any, additional software is needed to use Cisco Access Registrar?
A.
Apart from a fully patched and supported version of the operating system, Cisco Access Registrar is self-
contained. It has a fast, built-in database that stores the server configuration and user information. No extra
software is required to enforce user or group session limits, allocate IP addresses from IP pools defined in Cisco
Access Registrar, configure Cisco Access Registrar to act as a RADIUS proxy, or to use the configuration
replication feature.
Note:
A graphical user interface is available for Cisco Access Registrar; to enable the GUI, the server should
have
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5.x installed.
Q.
Is Cisco Access Registrar compatible with equipment from other vendors?
A.
Yes. Cisco maintains compatibility with the latest RADIUS and Diameter standards to help ensure that Cisco
Access Registrar is interoperable with any RADIUS and Diameter-compliant client, regardless of vendor. In
addition, Cisco Access Registrar's attribute dictionary comes predefined with the attributes of other third-party
vendors, and this attribute dictionary is completely customizable so attributes can be added, edited, or deleted
at any time.
Q.
Is Cisco Access Registrar scalable?
A.
Directory and database capabilities allow Cisco Access Registrar to support authentication and authorization for
millions of users. Multiple Cisco Access Registrar servers can reference a distributed directory or database.
Additionally, Cisco Access Registrar supports replication of its internal database to allow multiple servers to be
similarly configured. Cisco Access Registrar's multithreaded architecture provides performance that scales with
additional CPUs. Together, these features allow Cisco Access Registrar to scale to support large service
deployments with high call rates.
Q.
What protocols, ports, or secure transmission methods are used between the client and Cisco Access
Registrar server?
A.
For administration, TCP ports 2785 and 2786 are used. These ports are not configurable. The administrator
password is never sent across the wire in clear text.
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) daemon provided with Access Registrar uses standard
SNMP ports.
For RADIUS request processing, the network interfaces and ports used are configurable. By default, Cisco
Access Registrar listens on ports 1645 and 1646, on all interfaces.