Steel-Belted RADIUS Has Reached End-of-Life
Make the smart switch to InkBridgeRADIUS
Secure your network’s future with the world’s most widely used RADIUS server
CRITICAL SECURITY ALERT!
All Steel-Belted RADIUS versions are vulnerable to the BlastRADIUS protocol exploit. These vulnerabilities will never be fixed!
All editions of Steel-Belted RADIUS (SBR)—Enterprise, Global Enterprise, and Carrier editions—have reached end-of-life. SBR is no longer receiving security updates or feature enhancements. SBR has also reached end of support, which means that if anything goes wrong, there is no one who can help you.
It's time to move to a stable, secure, supported product: InkBridgeRADIUS. Get support from the team whose product authenticates the internet.
Why organizations are moving from Steel-Belted RADIUS to InkBridgeRADIUS
Steel-Belted RADIUS has bounced between vendors for years and is now abandoned,
leaving your critical authentication infrastructure vulnerable.
No security updates
Including no fix for the critical BlastRADIUS vulnerability.
No protocol updates
SBR lacks support for modern protocols like EAP-TLS with TLS 1.3.
No compliance updates
You’ll be falling behind current security standards and best practices.
No vendor support
You're on your own when problems arise.
In contrast, InkBridgeRADIUS is built on top of FreeRADIUS, which powers authentication for more than half the internet, including Fortune 500 companies, major ISPs, leading universities, and global telecoms. We have been supporting FreeRADIUS for over twenty-five years, and we're not going away any time soon.
InkBridgeRADIUS extends the functionality of FreeRADIUS with proprietary additions, which turn it into a full-featured product that is suitable for immediate use in telco and ISP environments.
Why work with InkBridge for your migration?
We are RADIUS experts
Our team founded FreeRADIUS 25+ years ago and continues to lead its development. When you work with us, you're working with the architects who have helped countless ISPs and telcos.
We write the standards
Our team has authored many of the RADIUS standards. We understand security implications that others miss and design solutions that anticipate future vulnerabilities—because we helped shape the protocols themselves.
We design custom solutions
Unlike "one-size-fits-all" products, we design authentication systems that integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure—no matter what databases or user management systems you already have.
We focus on your needs
We don't force you to replace your user management systems. We adapt to YOUR environment. There is no need to change business workflows or to update the rest of your technology stack.
We’ve helped global brands around the world
What to expect during your SBR to InkBridgeRADIUS migration
1. Assessment
We evaluate your current Steel-Belted RADIUS implementation:
- Database design and performance
- Policies and workflow
- Load balancing and site redundancy
- Recovery and failover procedures and design
- What database does your SBR server authenticate against?
There may be opportunities to dramatically improve performance by switching to a different database, or by optimizing the use of the database. - What policies are needed in your environment? Where are those policies currently stored and accessed? Is there an opportunity to streamline some of those policies?
- What (if any) load-balancing mechanism is in place to distribute traffic? What are the parameters of that system?
- How many sites are needed in your RADIUS ecosystem? How are they currently kept in sync? What workflows are in place to recover from an outage at one of those sites?
2. Custom design
We design a solution based on InkBridgeRADIUS that integrates with your existing business systems and databases.
Like most commercial RADIUS servers, SBR artificially constrains the technology choices in the rest of your authentication ecosystem. The cost of moving to a closed system can be prohibitive because the product is inflexible, and the vendor can require a complete overhaul of the rest of your network to work with their product.
In contrast, InkBridgeRADIUS is completely agnostic when it comes to databases, schemas, and authentication protocols. Our custom design of your authentication ecosystem works with your existing technology stack and workflows. This flexibility allows IT managers to have a best-of-breed infrastructure that is finely tuned to your business’ unique needs.
3. Implementation
Our experts handle the installation and configuration.
- We write test cases for your specific requirements to make sure that future configuration changes don’t trigger authentication failures or lost accounting data.
- We automate all ongoing monitoring, notifications, change management, and more.
4. Knowledge transfer
We provide comprehensive documentation that is both specific to your implementation and fully covers the functionality of our product.
5. Ongoing support
We're there when you need us with 24/7 support. Our world-wide team is available to answer any question and to respond to critical incidents. We can also help address interoperability issues, due to our deep relationships with other vendors and our unparalleled experience with the RADIUS standards.
Why InkBridgeRADIUS is the smart alternative to Steel-Belted RADIUS
Future-proof
Regularly updated with the latest security patches and protocol support. The open-source FreeRADIUS product will always have its source code available.
Standards-compliant
Always aligned with current RADIUS standards and security best practices. We write the standards, so you know we are compliant.
Flexible
Works with any database or user management system you already have. MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Redis, REST APIs—we ’ve worked with them all.
Scalable
Powers networks from small businesses to global telecoms with millions of users.
Trusted
Used by organisations like AT&T, major cloud providers, and most Fortune 500 companies. Our product is the most widely used RADIUS server in the world.
Supported
Backed by the world's foremost RADIUS experts at InkBridge Networks. We wrote FreeRADIUS. We wrote many of the RADIUS standards. No one knows FreeRADIUS and the RADIUS protocol better than us.
Ready to move forward?
Steel-Belted RADIUS is at end-of-life. Don't wait until a dead product creates a security vulnerability or compatibility issue that impacts your business. Make the switch to a modern, secure, standards-compliant product: InkBridgeRADIUS. And depend on the experts who created it.
Common questions about Steel-Belted RADIUS migration
How complex is migrating from Steel-Belted RADIUS to InkBridgeRADIUS?
With InkBridge Networks guiding your migration, the process is straightforward. We handle the technical aspects while ensuring your authentication policies and user database are migrated without affecting ongoing user access.
Will we need to replace our user management system?
No. Unlike many commercial products, we design InkBridgeRADIUS to work with your existing infrastructure. We adapt to your systems, not the other way around.
How long does a typical migration take?
Migration timelines depend on your specific environment, but our experienced team ensures minimal disruption to your network operations. Most simple migrations can be completed within weeks, not months. Complex migrations can take more time, mainly due to the care taken in upgrading production systems across multiple data centres.
Is FreeRADIUS secure?
Absolutely. In contrast to many other products, we publish all known security issues with FreeRADIUS. The last time there was a security issue that might affect users was 2019. We follow all modern practices for secure coding, including automated protocol "fuzzers", static analysis, and a suite of thousands of test cases.
Does FreeRADIUS scale?
Definitely. FreeRADIUS is used by major ISPs and global telecoms. Scaling to tens of millions of users is just a matter of careful system design, which is where we shine.
FreeRADIUS powers authentication for hundreds of millions of users, every day. If it's good enough for multiple national ISPs with tens of millions of users, then it's good enough for you.
Is FreeRADIUS compatible with ...?
Yes. FreeRADIUS is used by everyone, everywhere, all of the time. It works with all vendor equipment. Our talks with vendors indicate that most of them (including Cisco, HP, and Microsoft) test their products with FreeRADIUS before new code can be shipped.
In fact, we are confident enough in this statement to say that if a vendor product does not work with FreeRADIUS, then the vendor product does not follow the relevant specifications. The vendor needs to upgrade their equipment to implement RADIUS correctly.
On top of that, we write many of the RADIUS standards, including the recommended fixes to the recent BlastRADIUS vulnerability. That leadership means that all RADIUS vendors follow our advice, rather than the other way around.
What kind of support is available after migration?
InkBridge Networks offers comprehensive support packages tailored to your organisation's needs. From 24/7 critical incident support to regular maintenance, we ensure your authentication infrastructure remains reliable and secure.