4.2.5 Blocks of Vendor-Specific Attributes

Syntax

BEGIN VENDOR vendor-name [vendor-id]
…
END

Usage

The BEGIN keyword marks start of the block of definitions of vendor-specific attributes. The block is terminated by END keyword, optionally followed by an arbitrary number of words, which are regarded as a comment. The block may contain any valid dictionary declarations, except other blocks: nesting of declaration blocks is not allowed.

If vendor-id is absent, the value of vendor ID is looked up in the internal table of vendors; therefore, it must be defined before BEGIN statement (see VENDOR Statement).

BEGIN---END block alters the handling of ATTRIBUTE statements within it. If ATTRIBUTE statement does not contain an explicit vendor-id specification, the value of vendor-id is used instead.

For compatibility with FreeRadius an alternative syntax is also supported:

BEGIN-VENDOR vendor-name
…
END-VENDOR vendor-name

Such compatibility blocks must appear only after the declaration of vendor-name (see VENDOR Statement).

Example

The following is the usual way of defining vendor-specific attributes:

VENDOR          Livingston      307

ATTRIBUTE       LE-Terminate-Detail     2       string  Livingston
ATTRIBUTE       LE-Advice-of-Charge     3       string  Livingston

The following two examples show the alternative ways:

VENDOR Livingston 307
BEGIN VENDOR Livingston
ATTRIBUTE       LE-Terminate-Detail     2       string
ATTRIBUTE       LE-Advice-of-Charge     3       string
END

BEGIN VENDOR Livingston 307
ATTRIBUTE       LE-Terminate-Detail     2       string
ATTRIBUTE       LE-Advice-of-Charge     3       string
END

These three examples are completely equivalent to each other.