Internet Authentication Service

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Internet Authentication Service (IAS) provides centralized user authentication and authorization, auditing and accounting. It is included with the server editions of modern versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems.

1 Overview
2 Logging
3 History
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Overview

While Routing and Remote Access (RRAS) security is sufficient for small networks, larger companies often need a dedicated infrastructure for authentication. RADIUS is a standard for dedicated authentication servers.

Windows Server 2003 includes Microsoft Internet Authentication Service (IAS), an implementation of RADIUS server. IAS supports authentication for Windows-based clients, as well as for third-party clients that adhere to the RADIUS standard. IAS stores its authentication information in Active Directory, and can be managed with Remote Access Policies.

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.

[edit] 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 XML, then calls the stored procedure report_event, passing the XML data as ntext... the stored procedure can then unwrap the XML and save data as desired by the user.

[edit] 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 domain, support for UTF-8 logging, and improved security.^[1]

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 domains that the IAS server's domain has a trust relationship with), support for IEEE 802.1X port-based authentication, and other features.^[2]