The BQN rate policies and the assignment of subscribers to rate policies can be performed via a RADIUS interface. To do this, of course, the BQN must have visibility of the subscriber IP addresses, i.e., there cannot be a NAT between the subscribers and the BQN because the plan limits will be applied per subscriber IP address. It is also important that the wires are connected in the right way (access ports connected on the side of the subscribers).

Currently, only IPv4 subscribers are supported via RADIUS.

The integration is between the RADIUS clients or NAS(Network Access Servers, e.g., PPPoE servers) and the BQN management interface. The BQN acts as RADIUS server for RADIUS Accounting (but not for RADIUS Authentication and Authorization, which must go to the RADIUS server in charge of Authentication and Authorization). Ideally, the BQN should receive just a copy of the RADIUS Accounting messages, which carry all the necessary information, while the rest of the RADIUS interactions with the original RADIUS server should remain unchanged. The BQN uses the management IP address (same as GUI) to receive RADIUS messages in the standard Radius Accounting port (1813).

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The RADIUS Accounting Start and Interim messages link a subscriber IP address with a policy. The subscriber IP address is received in the Framed-IP-Address field. There are two ways to specify the policy:

• Dynamically, where the RADIUS attribute provides the policy definition and the BQN creates a policy based on that information on demand.
• Statically, where the RADIUS attribute contains the name of the policy to choose from the policies part of the BQN configuration.

The following parameters are supported. We list them in order of priority (parameters evaluated first will take precedence when obtaining the policy to assign):

Parameters to create policies dynamically:

• Mikrotik-Rate-Limit (Vendor 14988, ID=8):contains the policy rate limits, including optional burst parameters.
• Ascend-Data-Rate (Vendor 529, ID=197). The first instance defines the downlink rate limit, the second instance defines the uplink rate limit. If there is only one instance, it specifies the downlink limit, unless Ascend-Xmit-Rate is present, in which case it will specify the uplink limit.
• Ascend-Xmit-Rate (Vendor 529, ID=255). Downlink rate limit.

Parameters to select a configured policy (lower priority):

• Mikrotik-Address-List (Vendor 14988, ID=19).

When more than one parameter is present, the policy will be managed according to the priority order. For example, if both Mikrotik-Rate-Limit and Ascend-Data-Rate are present, Mikrotik-Rate-Limit will take precedence. Also, if both Ascend-Data-Rate and Mikrotik-Address-List are in the Radius message, Mikrotik-Address-List will be ignored. . In any case, it is possible to use any of those information elements, since the BQN can be configured to ignore the ones with more precedence, as can be seen in the following section.

If a RADIUS message contains none of the supported attributes, the policy assigned previously, if any, will be removed and a new one will be chosen based on BQN configured rate policy rules.

To integrate the BQN to the RADIUS, the steps are:

1. Configure RADIUS in the BQN
2. Configure the RADIUS clients
3. Specific steps (whether Dynamic or configured policies are used).
4. Check the state of policies and subscribers.