Subject: Protocol Action: An Architecture for Describing SNMP Management Frameworks to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 1997 07:29:44 -0500

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft for publication as Proposed Standards:

  An Architecture for Describing SNMP Management Frameworks
  <draft-ietf-snmpv3-next-gen-arch-07.txt>

  Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management
  Protocol (SNMP)
  <draft-ietf-snmpv3-v3mpc-model-07.txt>

  SNMPv3 Applications
  <draft-ietf-snmpv3-appl-05.txt>

  User-based Security Model (USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network
  Management Protocol (SNMPv3)
  <draft-ietf-snmpv3-usm-04.txt>      

  View-based Access Control Model (VACM) for the Simple Network
  Management Protocol (SNMP)
  <draft-ietf-snmpv3-acm-05.txt>

These documents are the product of the SNMP Version 3 Working Group.
The IESG contact persons are John Curran and Michael O'Dell.

Technical Summary
 
 This protocol provides for the remote management of network elements,
 both in simple manager/agent systems, but also in more complex systems
 with proxy agents and delegation structures.

 The protocol is builds on the experience gained with SNMPv2 by keeping
 the enhanced SMI with richer data types and operators, but then extends
 the functionality to support proxies and certain extensibility notions
 with a more regular architecture and far fewer "magic relationships" than
 the previous designs.  For example, it is now possible to concisely descibe
 whether an element acts as a manager or an agent, or both, without the
 contortions previously required.

 Most importantly, SNMPv3 provides a set of security mechanisms which are
 powerful and robust enough to dramatically improve the operational
 landscape of the global Internet, while remaining simple enough to be
 deployed at large scale.

Working Group Summary

 In general, the Working Group converged quite strongly.

 An almost unfathomable amount of work was done in record time
 with a level of professionalism and decorum rarely seen in the IETF.

 One issue was raised in Last Call regarding denial of service attacks and
 it was resolved in rough consensus as the cure being worse than the ill,
 and a situation which is dramatically better than the problems with the
 currently-deployed technology.  This is a clearly a judgement call - but
 the operations faction claims to be quite willing to live with the caveat.

 There was also a strong consensus that real field experience is now needed
 to identify and guide any further required work.

Protocol Quality

 This work has been reviewed by the Area Director responsible for the work
 as well as others knowledgeable in both SNMP fundamentals and large-scale
 network management deployment.
 
 There is at least one draft implementation, possibly two, which tracked
 the drafts as they evolved.  Feedback from this implementation was quite
 valuable to the document authors.  At least one commercial SNMP
 technology foundry has demonstrated a fully functional implementation at
 a trade show, and work is under way to fund upgrading one of the publicly
 available SNMPv2 implementations to full SNMPv3.

 Several network element vendors have stated intentions to provide
 SNMPv3 implementations in their products in the near future.