RADIUS-based network access is common in prosumer/office networks for requiring pre-registered MAC adddresses and/or selectively assigning VLANs to devices based on MAC address.

Typically, FreeRADIUS is used, however its flexibility and complexity is burdensome when only MAC-based authentication is required. Such a setup requires pre-registered MAC addresses, which can be difficult with IoT and consumer devices; and configuration of a default VLAN for unrecongnised MAC addresses is difficult.

Certain vendors' router hardware can provide simplistic RADIUS servers, e.g. a Ubiquiti Unifi Dream Machine, but they do not provide default VLAN assignment. It is also useful to be vendor agnostic.

Sinatra provides for this simple use case:

A simple NodeJS-based RADIUS server that provides (MAC-based) authentication, in any format.
A simple REST API to add/update/delete reqistered users (MAC addresses).
A Dockerfile (and docker-compose) to encapsulate the server within a docker container.
Optional default VLAN support to support unknown MAC addresses, e.g. into a guest network.

Feature roadmap

Mass-import from CSV
Time-based authentication
Time-limited access
Connection accounting (with REST API endpoints for data access)