Definition of RADIUS Vendor-Ids

Question

Is there a central authority for the definition of Radius Vendor-Id's for Vendor Specific Attributes?

How are Vendor ID's allocated? and who defines and distributes the dictionary files?

Answer 1

Yes IANA allocates the PENs, they're the same as those used for SNMP, Diameter, DHCPv6 etc.. etc..

The attributes definitions are created by the vendors, and usually published in the vendor's product documentation.

There is not single format for dictionaries, so the attribute definitions in the vendor documentation have to be translated into a form the RADIUS server you're using can understand.

In the case of FreeRADIUS the work of translating into the FreeRADIUS dictionary format is done by the community, usually when a member of the community is working with a specific vendor's devices.

By submitting the dictionaries back they ensure there are no potential breakages as the FreeRADIUS dictionary format evolves.

Fun fact - In RADIUS and most of the other vendor specific option/attribute definitions, the format of the vendor attributes is not actually defined, meaning that the attribute width and length field width can differ from vendor to vendor. i.e. there's no issue with having 16bit vendor attribute numbers in RADIUS.

Answer 2

OK, apparently RADIUS uses the iana privtae enterprise codes

https://www.iana.org/assignments/enterprise-numbers/enterprise-numbers

Still not clear of the provenance of dictionaries