How to turn off RADIUS Accounting in FreeRADIUS and Microsoft NPS?

Disabling RADIUS accounting ensures that your server no longer processes or logs accounting requests. In FreeRADIUS, you remove or comment out the accounting block in your site configuration (e.g., sites-enabled/default) and disable the accounting listener on port 1813, then restart the service. In Microsoft NPS, you open the NPS console, go to Properties → Accounting, and uncheck both Log authentication requests and Log accounting requests, as well as disable any SQL logging in the Accounting Configuration Wizard.

Disabling Accounting in FreeRADIUS

1. Open your site file, typically /etc/freeradius/3.0/sites-enabled/default (FreeRADIUS’ configuration directory and file locations can differ between versions, Linux distributions, and custom installations), and comment out the entire accounting section:

# accounting {
#     detail
#     sql
# }

2. In radiusd.conf (often /etc/freeradius/radiusd.conf), comment out the listen block for accounting:

# listen {
#     type = acct
#     ipaddr = *
#     port   = 1813
# }

3. Apply the changes by reloading the server:

systemctl restart freeradius

or

service freeradius restart

4. Confirm that FreeRADIUS is no longer bound to the accounting port:

ss -nlp | grep :1813

No output for FreeRADIUS indicates accounting is disabled.

Disabling Accounting in Microsoft NPS

1. Launch the Network Policy Server MMC snap-in:

Start → Administrative Tools → Network Policy Server (nps.msc)

2. Right-click NPS (Local) in the left pane and select Properties.

3. In the Accounting tab, uncheck Log authentication requests and Log accounting requests.

4. If you previously configured SQL logging via the Accounting Configuration Wizard, re-run the wizard and select Disable logging, or remove your SQL Server entry in the wizard settings. 

5. Click OK to save. NPS will no longer record any RADIUS accounting data.

Helpful Links

Rublon Authentication Proxy - Documentation