Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (aaa)

Last Modifield: 2002-02-11

Chair(s):

Bernard Aboba <aboba@internaut.com>
D Mitton <david@mitton.com>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):

Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
Bert Wijnen <bwijnen@lucent.com>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:

Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: aaa-wg@merit.edu
To Subscribe: majordomo@merit.edu
In Body: subscribe aaa-wg
Archive: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/aaa-wg/

Description of Working Group:

The Authentication, Authorization and Accounting Working Group focused on the development of requirements for Authentication, Authorization and Accounting as applied to network access. Requirements were gathered from NASREQ, MOBILE IP, and ROAMOPS Working Groups as well as TIA 45.6. The AAA WG then solicited submission of protocols meeting the requirements, and evaluated the submissions.

This incarnation of the AAA Working Group will focus on development of an IETF Standards track protocol, based on the DIAMETER submission.

In this process, it is to be understood that the IETF does not function as a rubber stamp. It is likely that the protocol will be changed significantly during the process of development.

The immediate goals of the AAA working group are to address the following issues:

- Clarity. The protocol documents should clearly describe the contents of typical messages and the requirements for interoperability.

- Error messages. The protocol should define categories of error messages, enabling implementations to respond correctly based on the category. The set of error messages should cover the full range of operational problems.

- Accounting. The accounting operational model should be described for each type of network access.

- IPv6. The protocol must include attributes in support for IPv6 network access and must be transportable over IPv6.

- Transport. The protocol should be transport independent and must define at least one mandatory-to-implement transport mapping. Other transport mappings may also be defined. All transport mappings must effectively support congestion control.

- Explicit proxy support. The protocol should offer explicit support for proxies, including support for automated message routing, route recording, and (where necessary) path hiding.

- RADIUS compatibility. The protocol should provide improved RADIUS backward compatibility in the case where only RADIUS attributes are used or where RADIUS proxies or servers exist in the path.

- Security. The protocol should define a lightweight data object security model that is implementable on NASes.

- Data model. The proposal should offer logical separation between the protocol and the data model and should support rich data types.

- MIBs. A MIB must be defined, supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 operation.

Goals and Milestones:

Done  Submission of requirements document as an Informational RFC.
Done  Submission of evaluation document as an Informational RFC.
Done  Submission of design team recommendations on protocol improvements.
Done  Incorporation of design team recommendations into protocol submission.
DEC 00  Improved protocol submission accepted as an official WG draft.
APR 01  Submission of protocol document(s) as a Proposed Standard RFC.

Internet-Drafts:

AAA Problem Statements (58546 bytes)
Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) Transport Profile (87207 bytes)
Diameter Base Protocol (313469 bytes)
Diameter Mobile IPv4 Application (104838 bytes)
Diameter NASREQ Application (138570 bytes)
The DIAMETER API (72784 bytes)
Diameter CMS Security Application (76202 bytes)

Request For Comments:

Accounting Attributes and Record Formats (RFC 2924) (75561 bytes)
Introduction to Accounting Management (RFC 2975) (129771 bytes)
Criteria for Evaluating AAA Protocols for Network Access (RFC 2989) (53197 bytes)
Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting:Protocol Evaluation (RFC 3127) (170579 bytes)

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