Internet Authentication Service
Internet Authentication Service (IAS) is a component of
Overview
While Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) security is sufficient for small networks, larger companies often need a dedicated infrastructure for authentication. RADIUS is a standard for dedicated authentication servers.
While IAS requires the use of an additional server component, it provides a number of advantages over the standard methods of RRAS authentication. These advantages include centralized authentication for users, auditing and accounting features, scalability, and seamless integration with the existing features of RRAS.
In Windows Server 2008, Network Policy Server (NPS) replaces the Internet Authentication Service (IAS). NPS performs all of the functions of IAS in Windows Server 2003 for VPN and 802.1X-based wireless and wired connections and performs health evaluation and the granting of either unlimited or limited access for Network Access Protection clients.
Logging
By default, IAS logs to local files (%systemroot%\LogFiles\IAS\*) though it can be configured to log to SQL as well (or in place of).
When logging to SQL, IAS appears to wrap the data into
History
The initial version of Internet Authentication Service was included with the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack.
Windows 2000 Server's implementation added support for more intelligent resolution of user names that are part of a
Windows Server 2003's implementation introduces support for logging to a Microsoft SQL Server database, cross-forest authentication (for Active Directory user accounts in other Forests that the IAS server's Forest has a cross-forest trust relationship with, not to be confused with Domain trust which has been a feature in IAS since NT4), support for IEEE 802.1X port-based authentication, and other features.[2]
All versions of IAS support multi domain setups. Only Windows Server 2003 supports cross forest. While NT4 version includes a Radius Proxy, Windows 2000 didn't have such a feature. Windows Server 2003 reintroduced the feature and is capable of intelligently proxy, load balance, and tolerate faults from faulty or unreachable back-end servers.
References
External links
- Deploying Internet Authentication Service (IAS) in Windows 2003
- Internet Authentication Service in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Resource Kit
- Article describing how to log IAS (RADIUS) + DHCP to SQL
- Configure IAS RADIUS for secure 802.1x wireless LAN at archive.today (archived 2012-12-06)
- How to self-sign a RADIUS server for secure PEAP or EAP-TTLS authentication at archive.today (archived 2012-12-05)
- IAS Log parsing utility. Allows to visualize ias log files