Here's the system information:
16 Livinston Portmaster PM25's
2 NT 4.0 SP2 RadiusNT (.60) servers (Pentium 100's w/64MB RAM)
1 NT 4.0 SP2 Access97 server (Pentium 100 Dual Processor w/72MB RAM)
Here's some history:
We installed RadiusNT on a Pentium 100, installed it as a service, set up
a System DSN, connected it to an Access95 database via ODBC and all was
good. We saw ODBC response times of 400ms - 1500ms. Then we grew.
We installed RadiusNT on a second Pentium 100, installed it as a service,
set up a system DSN, and tried to start it as a service (we failed with a
1067 error every time it started.) (The machine that had the Access95
database on it still started fine as a service.) We ran radius from the
command line (radius -x -o) and everything clicked. We saw ODBC response
times of 400ms-1500ms. Then we grew again.
We moved the Access95 database from the pentium 100 to the dual-proc 100
and found that we could not start RadiusNT as a service on either of the
Pentium 100 machines (now dedicated RadiusNT servers) BUT if we ran from
the command prompt with -x -o everything clicked. We saw ODBC response
times of 800ms-1500ms.
We kept growing...and somewhere along the line, we upgraded to Access97
(ugh). It was one of those "pull an all nighter so the sales folks will be
up and running at 9am the next morning" things. It seemed to work. Kinda.
(It was working when I went to sleep, anyway)
Here's what we have now:
RadiusNT is running off text files with 6500 users in them because
whenever we start it from the command line with "radius -x -o" it would
run for about 15 minutes and then start showing ODBC response times of
15000ms (no typo - 15000ms). A restart of RadiusNT would cure the problem
for another 15 minutes or so...Obviously, if allowed to run, the
portmasters would get upset and not authenticate anyone because of the
latency.
These are some things I may have not included above:
When we configured the ODBC, we allowed Office(95&97) to install it's ODBC
drivers and then configured RADIUS as a SYSTEM DSN (on all three computers)
We are setting the registry with RadAdmin and then starting from the
command line with "radius -x -o"
So here are my questions:
1) Why will RadiusNT not start as a service if it is not on the same
machine as the ODBC database?
2) Why does Access97 show such poor performance on the ODBC end?
3) We are migrating to a Cascade ax1600 - anyone had any experience with
this monster and RadiusNT?
My appologies:
If these were covered on the list in the past...sorry I missed it. I
scanned
(briefly) the archives and could not come up with a match. I have been
following the list for a while now, but it's a lot of mail!!!!
Thanks in advance,
Sam Dibrell, Jr.
System Administrator
South Texas Internet Connections, Inc.
San Antonio, Texas