3com WX4400 3CRWX440095A User Manual

C

HAPTER

 22: C

ONFIGURING

 C

OMMUNICATION

 

WITH

 RADIUS

During the holddown, it is as if the dead RADIUS server does not exist. 
MSS skips over any dead RADIUS servers to the next live server, or on to 
the next method if no more live servers are available, depending on your 
configuration. For example, if a RADIUS server group is the primary 
authentication method and local is the secondary method, MSS fails over 
to the local method if all RADIUS servers in the server group are 
unresponsive and have entered the dead time.

For failover authentication or authorization to work promptly, 3Com 
recommends that you change the dead time to a value other than 0. 
With the default setting, the dead time is never invoked and MSS does 
not hold down requests to unresponsive RADIUS servers. Instead, MSS 
attempts to send each new authentication or authorization request to a 
server even if the server is thought to be unresponsive. This behavior can 
cause authentication or authorization failures on clients because MSS 
does not fail over to the local method soon enough and the clients 
eventually time out. 

You can change RADIUS values globally and set a global password (key) 
with the following command. The key string is the shared secret that the 
WX switch uses to authenticate itself to the RADIUS server.

set radius {deadtime minutes | encrypted-key string | 
key string | retransmit number | timeout seconds}

(To override global settings for individual RADIUS servers, use the set 
radius server command. See “Configuring Individual RADIUS Servers” 
on page 523.)

For example, the following commands set the dead-time timer to 
10 minutes and set the password to r8gney for all RADIUS servers in the 
WX configuration:

WX1200# set radius deadtime 10
success: change accepted.
WX1200# set radius key r8gney
success: change accepted.

To reset global RADIUS server settings to their factory defaults, use the 
following command:

clear radius {deadtime | key | retransmit | timeout}