RADIUS Account Server Prioritization
Especially useful for customers with multiple OCSBCs, the RADIUS account server prioritization feature allows you to assign a priority to each of the account servers you configure. Setting the priority for RADIUS accounting servers allows you to load balance traffic across the servers.
Without this feature, the OCSBC sorts RADIUS accounting servers by their IP addresses and ports. For example, if you have a pre-existing accounting server with the IP address and port combination of 10.1.31.2:1813 and then configure a new server at 10.0.3.12:2145, the new server will take priority over the pre-existing one. Of course, you always have the option of allowing the system to set the priority or your accounting servers in this way.
The prioritization feature works with all of the strategy types you set in the accounting configuration. However, it is most applicable to the hunt or failover strategies. You can assign a number to each server to mark its priority, or you can leave the priority parameter set to 0 (default) so the OCSBC prioritizes them by IP address and port.
How You Might User Server Prioritization
This example illustrates how you may benefit from using the prioritization feature if you have multiple OCSBCs sending RADIUS CDRs to multiple RADIUS servers. Consider the following OCSBCs and accounting servers.
| OCSBC | Account Server1 Priority | Account Server2 Priority | Account Server3 Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| OCSBC1 | 10 | 7 | 4 |
| OCSBC2 | 7 | 4 | 10 |
| OCSBC3 | 4 | 10 | 7 |
| OCSBC4 | 10 | 7 | 4 |
| OCSBC5 | 7 | 4 | 10 |
| OCSBC6 | 4 | 10 | 7 |
If the strategy for this example is set to hunt or failover and assuming no timeouts are pending, you can see that OCSBC1 sends its accounting traffic to Account Server3 over the other two. OCSBC2 sends its traffic to Account Server2 over the others, and likewise for the remainder of OCSBCs and servers. The traffic, then, is load balanced across the servers, less likely to overburden any of them.