Lucent bills its product as a RADIUS development platform on which customers can write authentication applications combining device and user authentication with application initiation and complex accounting processes. Instead of C code, Lucent provides a high-level scripting language for building custom apps; Lucent's programmers use this language and interface in developing supplied authentication scripts. In our tests, this interface made programming relatively easy, and script development was fast because no compiling was needed.
NavisRadius' Policy Assistant helped us establish the initial configuration and deploy necessary plug-ins, Lucent's term for the modular scripts used in building deployment configurations. We found the Policy Assistant software flexible, with an enormous variety of options available as we moved through the questions that comprise the setup routine.
Lucent supplies a plethora of plug-ins, and even in cases where we knew that some implementation-specific work would be required--importing MAC (Media Access Control) addresses of wireless cards for populating an ACL (access-control list), for example--we could use a generated configuration as the basis for custom scripts, saving time. We found LDAP and SQL plug-ins, along with a Read DNS plug-in, and functions that act on program flow, reporting, accounting and system performance were included or easily developed. Programming possibilities within plug-ins are almost unlimited. For example, we built ACLs as part of the "allow this" plug-in. We then reversed the logic for a "deny this" plug-in.
Because Lucent assumes that NavisRadius customers have enterprise-class accounting and reporting tools, the product provides many options for delivering information to reporting systems, including traps, syslog, database or Web pages. Information can be exported over LDAP, though Lucent doesn't recommend this route, saying it finds other external stores more robust and easily accessible to external applications. NavisRadius also can pass variables to an external program or to thread-safe C code, though these last two options inflict a performance hit on the processor. Finally, you can selectively log certain criteria to specific external sources. NavisRadius doesn't include an internal reporting tool, though Lucent says one will be released shortly.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
