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Information flow in an ISP

Hi!

I am working on an application that will run within an ISP network and is meant to redirect users to specific servers based on their phone prefix. I have some questions to ask for anyone who has knowledge of how information flows within the network.

As I understand it, when a user connects to the internet either via a DSL or dial-up modem, data travels through the telecommunication infrastructure that the ISP uses to one of many available RAS routers that are responsible for the communication with an available NAS at the ISP. The Network Access Server will then pass the username/password to a RADIUS server that in turn will check that the information is correct using some authentication scheme. If accepted, the server will then authorize access to the ISP system and select an IP address, L2TP parameters, etc. for the user.

My question is:
Does the ISP at any point during this process know the phone number from which the user dialed up for the connection? Does this sort of information that can identify a user’s location (ie phone prefix) reach the RADIUS server?

If anyone could help me out with this it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Alex.
 
The ISP I work for is able to view numbers when a customer connects to a dialup, we are not able to view a number when a connection is made to broadband.

We log the numbers that connect to the dialup rack which is dependent on their account type, I believe that this information is collected by the modem racks rather than the radius servers.

We also make this information available to the account owner by using an online feature.
 
Thanks for the reply!
Some questions regarding your post...

This information is required after authentication has completed successfully so that the user can be redirected to the appropriate server. I am assuming that the best place for my redirection script to run is on the RADIUS server. Can a RADIUS server have access to a dialup rack? Also in addition to this another question and sorry if it sounds silly but…what is a dialup rack and what format is this information kept in? Is it a DB or a text file?

Finally, other than the phone prefix that I have referred to for determining the location of a user, is their possibly some other type of unique identifier that could be used for broadband?

Thanks again.
Alex.
 
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Unfortunately I do not know all the answers to your questions.

Depending on their account types will depend on the numbers they can access, the numbers are retsricted by the number they are calling from. This is not retricted by radius but the telecoms company that we use.

When a user communicates to the modem rack a connection is made, the username and password is then pused to the radius to authenticate the user. The radius then communicates back allowing or refusing the session.

I'm not sure how the information is stored on the modem racks, probably within their memory or written to a db. But modem racks are hardware, and each have a number of ports that users can connect to.

For broadband the indetifiers that we have are their username, install number and a BT ref known as a CBUK. All we log when a bb connection is made is the session times a username is connected, no other information is stored that is viewable by support.

More information may be stored that I am unaware of.

Sorry but that is the limit of my knowledge.
 
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