3Com WX1200 3CRWX120695A manual WX switch uses to authenticate itself to the Radius server

522CHAPTER 22: CONFIGURING COMMUNICATION WITH RADIUS

During the holddown, it is as if the dead RADIUS server does not exist. MSS skips over any dead RADIUS servers to the next live server, or on to the next method if no more live servers are available, depending on your configuration. For example, if a RADIUS server group is the primary authentication method and local is the secondary method, MSS fails over to the local method if all RADIUS servers in the server group are unresponsive and have entered the dead time.

For failover authentication or authorization to work promptly, 3Com recommends that you change the dead time to a value other than 0. With the default setting, the dead time is never invoked and MSS does not hold down requests to unresponsive RADIUS servers. Instead, MSS attempts to send each new authentication or authorization request to a server even if the server is thought to be unresponsive. This behavior can cause authentication or authorization failures on clients because MSS does not fail over to the local method soon enough and the clients eventually time out.

Configuring Global You can change RADIUS values globally and set a global password (key) RADIUS Defaults with the following command. The key string is the shared secret that the

WX switch uses to authenticate itself to the RADIUS server.

set radius {deadtime minutes encrypted-key string key string retransmit number timeout seconds}

(To override global settings for individual RADIUS servers, use the set radius server command. See “Configuring Individual RADIUS Servers” on page 523.)

For example, the following commands set the dead-time timer to

10 minutes and set the password to r8gney for all RADIUS servers in the WX configuration:

WX1200# set radius deadtime 10 success: change accepted. WX1200# set radius key r8gney success: change accepted.

To reset global RADIUS server settings to their factory defaults, use the following command:

clear radius {deadtime key retransmit timeout}