Need information on TACACS

[KABIRA16]

Hello there, I am relatively very new to networking field and hence I need some information from you people. The company which I am working with wants me to handle VPN accounts and authenticate them with Active directory. I have heard this can be easily done using TACACS. Therefore I need some information about TACACS. Also are there any alternatives available for TACACS? Any suggestions/solutions are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

[Zachary]

TACACS is a remote authentication protocol which is communicates with the authentication servers. TACACS is basically used to check whether the user has access to the network or not. Whenever a user wants to use the network, he will enter the username and the password. This username and password will be forwarded by the TACACS to the authentication server. The authentication checks if the user is eligible for use of the network and sends an appropriate response. Depending on the response of the authentication server, the user is granted or denied the access to the network.

[Steve123]

As the TACACS used TIP to authenticate the session of the user, it was considered as unreliable. Therefore more advanced version of TACACS was developed which is known as TACACS+. TACACS+ is completely new protocol and is not compatible with TACACS. TACACS+ uses the Transmission control protocol to authenticate the user session. As TCP is considered as the most reliable protocol due to handshaking feature TACACS+ is considered as a reliable protocol to control access to the network.

[Wguy2008]

TACACS+ is very useful in handling the admin sessions but it faces some problems while handling the authentication sessions from the server to client. It also faces problems with clear text passwords while working with Debian. Moreover it has some problems while Authenticating with the Active directory. Therefore I would suggest you to use RADIUS instead of TACACS+ as it is easy to understand and implement. RADIUS provides easy Active directory authentications and reliable user authentication.

[KABIRA16]

Thank you all for replying to the post. Lot of information about TACACS and TACACS+ was provided which is really helping me in deciding the protocol to be used. I want to know more about RADIUS, so can you please provide some more insights on RADIUS. Also how does it provide more ease in handling the authentication?

[Wguy2008]

RADIUS is known as Remote Authentication Dial in User service. This protocol is used to provide central authentication, authorization and management for computers to be able to connect to the network and share the resources. RADIUS is widely used in managing internet accounts by the ISP's. RADIUS is more simple to configure and use because it uses UDP to authenticate and maintain the user accounts. There are some roaming partners which establish a secure tunnel between the servers of the RADIUS so as to ensure that the users information cannot be intercepted while traversing through the internet.