RFC 2866, "RADIUS Accounting", June 2000

Note: This RFC has been updated by RFC 2867, RFC 5080, RFC 5997

Errata ID: 4488
Status: Rejected
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Nick Lowe
Date Reported: 2015-09-29
Rejected by: Benoit Claise
Date Rejected: 2015-10-05

Section 5.11 says:

Acct-Multi-Session-Id

   Description

      This attribute is a unique Accounting ID to make it easy to link
      together multiple related sessions in a log file.  Each session
      linked together would have a unique Acct-Session-Id but the same
      Acct-Multi-Session-Id.  It is strongly recommended that the Acct-
      Multi-Session-Id contain UTF-8 encoded 10646 [7] characters.

It should say:

Acct-Multi-Session-Id

   Description

      This attribute is a globally unique Accounting ID to make it easy
      to link together multiple related sessions in a log file.  Each
      session linked together would have a globally unique
      Acct-Session-Id but the same Acct-Multi-Session-Id.  It is
      strongly recommended that the Acct-Multi-Session-Id contain
      UTF-8 encoded 10646 [7] characters.

Notes:

The RFC does not explicitly state the scope of uniqueness and it must be clarified to state that Acct-Multi-Session-Ids are expected to be globally unique. I believe this to be the original, implicit intent of the author.

An ideal Acct-Multi-Session-Id would have the properties of a GUID/UUID.

See Errata 4487 for the same clarification on the Acct-Session-Id.
--VERIFIER NOTES--
As summarized with Nick:


It looks like the Acct-Session-Id and Acct-Multi-Session-Id errata
both will and should be rejected on the grounds that they would
constitute technical changes based on the original intent of the RFC,
which we now know. That does make sense and would be a reasonable
course of action now that that's known.

I am pleased that I have engendered a discussion on what I believe to
be a pertinent issue here. Alan has commented that he feels another
RADIUS fixes RFC would be sensible. I agree with that course of
action.

Thanks for all your time here!

Regards,

Nick

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