On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Javier Henderson <javier@kjsl.org> wrote:
Are you talking about Cisco routers? The default timeout value for TACACS+ is five seconds, so I’m not sure where you’re coming up with thirty seconds, unless you have seven servers listed on the router and the first six are dead/unreachable.
Even 5 seconds extra for each command may hinder operators, to the extent it would be intolerable; shell commands should run almost instantaneously.... this is not a GUI, with an hourglass. Real-time responsiveness in a shell is crucial --- which remote auth should not change. Sometimes operators paste a buffer with a fair number of commands, not expecting a second delay between each command --- a repeated delay, may also break a pasted sequence. It is very possible for two of three auth servers to be unreachable, in case of a network break, but that isn't necessary. The "response timeout" might be 5 seconds, but in reality, there are cases where you would wait longer, and that is tragic, since there are some obvious alternative approaches that would have had results that would be more 'friendly' to the interactive user. (Like remembering which server is working for a while, or remembering that all servers are down -- for a while, and having a 50ms timeout, with all servers queried in parallel, instead of a 5 seconds timeout) -jav
-- -JH