Customer Reviews

Radius

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Reading the other reviews of this book I was expecting it to be fantastic. I was disappointed. The book is well written and provides a good overview. However, I was hoping that I could use this book to take me through a fairly complex RADIUS implementation using FreeRADIUS and LDAP. It was not at all adequate in that regard. The configuration examples are sparse and not explained in detail. I was left with a lot of questions about how the RADIUS software actually implements the standard. How user files are parsed, how attribute matching is done, what is actually checked and returned. Things like that were not covered at all. This is a good introduction to RADIUS, but if you have a real project to do you are still going to have to spend a lot of time digging for more info on the web or in poorly written documentation that is available out there. I would call this the best RADIUS book because it is the ONLY RADIUS book.

...!

...

The RFCs tend to be full of nitty gritty legalese, by the very nature of their being formal specifications. That is the reason one would want to read a book, such as this one, in the hope of gaining implementation and deployment perspective that may be lacking in the the RFCs. This book does not measure up.

It is poorly organized, is ridden with glaring errors, and does not explain key concepts well, if at all. If the author has brought any technical expertise on the subject matter to bear, it certainly does not show up. It looks and feels like a potpourri of hastily put together notes by a sysadmin technician; nothing more.

This book is a complete guide. The author explains the inner workings of RADIUS quite clearly. The practical suggestions on setting up freeradius, while basic, are very helpful; plus, it's the only book out there, and it's of typical O'Reilly quality. In closing, this book is very good, in-depth, and handy. I'd recommend it to anyone.

This book may not be bad for someone looking for a brief overview of the RADIUS protocol (perhaps a manager), but is virtually useless for anything beyond that. The book is poorly organized, severly lacks detail, and has its share of errors. Technical readers should look elsewhere.

I found this book a good reference to RADIUS. While some content is available in the RFCs, it's handy to have it compact and easy to read inside this book. The overview and guide to FreeRADIUS is good to have, especially considering the lack of available documentation from the project. I especially found the security chapter helpful, a candid discussion of where RADIUS fails.

While there could be more coverage in this book, I think it's a great one to have available. Recommended.

To express my idea about this book, it is
enough to say this:

I printed and inserted in the book the 5-page
examples from RFC-2865 to understand what is
going on!

It is an awful book; it has not a single negotiation example;
There is not a single reference of real-world use. I kept
searching for overviews of advanced EAP schemes using
RADIUS as the final authenticator, hoped to see examples of
802.1X port authentication controlled by RADIUS, but there is
nothing there:
The only thing this book offers is alphabetically ordered
attributes copied from RFCs but printed in a nice font!

A very thorough and detailed -without fluff O'reilly book. Since Freeradius has no documentation, this was godsent. It only lacks a little when it comes to configuring Freeradius with other databases (Mysql is the example setup), but otherwise very thorough.

This book is an inaccurate and incorrect copy of RFCs with a lot of buzzwords. This should be great only because this is only book about RADIUS protocol in the world. It is better for you to read RFCs if you understand the situation that needs RADIUS.

I tried to muddle my way through the RFC and didn't get anywhere; so bought this book to get an overview of the RADIUS protocol and from that perspective it was fairly decent. We were using freeradius for a wireless project and this was the only book on the market at the time. I wasn't involved in the actual deployment; so an overview was all I was looking for. The book does go over a freeradius implementation against a mysql backend, but if you are looking for assistance with deployment you are probably better of looking up the freeradius documentation (much better now from what it was then), as well as use their mailing list where you can get prompt answers.

We had a specific job to do at work which required knowledge of radius servers and their setup. I purchased this book to supplement my knowledge and found it very useful ... Got the job done !!! There was enough information (and helpful hints as to where to get more) to configure the Cisco AV-pairs ...