Network RADIUS is an international team of remote authentication experts headed by FreeRADIUS founder and leader Alan DeKok. After joining the WBA recently, we sat down with Alan to get a brief overview of the company, and to find out what led them to a membership in the WBA!

Can you please give us a brief introduction to Network RADIUS?

Network RADIUS is the company behind FreeRADIUS, the worlds most popular RADIUS server.  Our international team builds, operates, and supports RADIUS systems for enterprises, telcos, and universities across the world.  The company is headed by CEO Alan DeKok, who also started the FreeRADIUS project in 1999.  Alan is also responsible for many of the RADIUS specifications in the IETF.

Network RADIUS specializes in the development, design, and support of high performance, high-availability RADIUS systems for Internet Service Providers and corporate network clients. What are some of the challenges associated with this, and how does the company approach these challenges?

The major challenges for us almost always involve database design.  While we have a RADIUS server, the bulk of our work is building entire RADIUS ecosystems.  We find that database design is a critical component of RADIUS ecosystems.  This work involves designing schemas, replication methods, optimizing queries. etc.  The alternative is to have customers see “the RADIUS server is slow”, when the underlying problem is, in fact, the database.

How is 2023 shaping up for Network RADIUS – any important product launches or announcements that you can give us a preview of?

While we don’t have product launches to announce at this time, we have a few ongoing efforts which we hope will bear fruit later in the year.

What does Network RADIUS hope to get out of its membership in the WBA?

 We hope to participate in, and contribute to ongoing development of RADIUS standards.  We are particularly interested in the RADIUS Accounting Assurance group.  We’ve seen customers run into many issues with RADIUS accounting.  As a smaller company, there is only so much influence we have on vendors.  We hope that working with the WBA will let us help develop industry standards in this space, and encourage vendors to follow those standards.  This work should greatly improve customer experience, and revenue!

Learn more about Network RADIUS by visiting their website.