Radiator AAA Server

The problem

Appliance and cloud-only RADIUS products hide their logic, limit integrations and lock pricing to user counts. Teams need a server that speaks every protocol their network uses and can be shaped to local policy.

Target outcome

One authentication server for Wi-Fi, VPN, device administration, roaming and subscriber access, configured to your policy and supported in the UK.

What Radiator AAA Server is

Radiator AAA Server is the authentication, authorisation and accounting server that Radiator Software first released in 1998 and has developed continuously since. It is written in Perl and built to be read: every Radiator 4 licence includes the full source, and the configuration exposes the request flow so that policy can be expressed precisely rather than approximated through a wizard. Radiator Software describes it as the only commercial AAA server delivered with full source code.

It handles RADIUS and RadSec (TLS 1.3) for network access, TACACS+ for device administration, and acts as a Diameter gateway for operator use cases, over IPv4 and IPv6 and UDP, TCP or SCTP. It supports the mainstream EAP methods, including certificate-based EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and PEAP, with the SIM-based methods added by the SIM Pack. The vendor counts more than sixty authentication methods in total.

What it connects to

Identity comes from wherever you keep it: Microsoft Entra ID and Active Directory, LDAP directories such as OpenLDAP, SQL databases including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Oracle, and REST services. Several back-ends can be combined into one decision. Multi-factor options include TOTP apps such as Microsoft and Google Authenticator, Duo Security, RSA tokens, YubiKey and DigiPass. For guest access it integrates with Oracle Opera PMS and other FIAS property systems, and with SIP2 library systems. Accounting and logs can be written to SQL, syslog, JSON, Elasticsearch and Splunk.

Where it is used

• Secure staff Wi-Fi with certificate authentication against the corporate directory
• Device administration with TACACS+ across multi-vendor networks
• eduroam, govroam and OpenRoaming federation for universities and public bodies
• Subscriber authentication for broadband, Wi-Fi offload and voice over Wi-Fi with the operator packs
• Guest access tied to hotel property systems and library patron records

Licensing and support

Licences are sized by the number of servers: a single server, two, seven or unlimited. Each licence includes the source code and first-year access to new releases and patches, renewed annually. Support is a separate contract at the level you choose. Level9 Networks supplies the licences in the UK, provides engineering help and delivers installation, migration and training. See licensing and support.

Radiator AAA Server or Radiator Policy Server?

Radiator AAA Server is the mature, text-configured platform with the widest protocol and integration coverage, and the base for the operator packs. Radiator Policy Server is the Radiator 10 enterprise server, rewritten for performance, with a web dashboard, REST API and Lua policies. We help you choose during evaluation, and some organisations run the one that fits each site.