Subject: Re: [MIB-DOCTORS] SNMPSet is dead?

From: Michael MacFaden <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:58:11 -0800

>From what I see, standardized configuration is not something that happens
in IETF. Other organizations do that with measured success for a particular
domain.

These organizations tend to have  clear scope and resources for testing and
reporting compliance for a given vendor's product.. Examples include docsis
and open networking foundation.

That IETF builds one or more protocols to support configuration not
withstanding, it remains to be seen if even these are ever adopted.

So any policy to recommend what to use is understandable but not what
implementers will look to in building product.

Mike MacFaden

---

From: Chris Elliott <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 12:12:46 -0500

There are many uses of SNMP sets that have little or nothing to do with
configuration. One of the problem with SNMP and SMI is that there isn't the
notion of an action. Therefore, setting objects has been recruited to
perform actions.

A standards-based example is RMON, where SNMP sets are used to setup data
collection and alarms.

Cisco IOS has several SNMP settable objects that are used, including
objects to reboot the device and download the device config.

I use SNMP sets with objects in the CISCO-CONFIG-MIB to manage the Cisco
devices in the IETF meeting networks--both to collect configs and to
distribute changes (configlets).

So SNMP set use isn't dead. SNMP set use to directly configure devices may
be. And defining new read-write objects may be.

Chris.

On Tuesday, January 21, 2014, Michael MacFaden <[email-masked]> wrote:

> These organizations tend to have  clear scope and resources for testing
> and reporting compliance for a given vendor's product.. Examples include
> docsis and open networking foundation.
>

-- 
Chris Elliott
[email-masked]

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 09:43:29 -0800

> A standards-based example is RMON, where SNMP sets are used to setup data
My group at Cisco wrote the RMON agent code.
I uses the CLI to configure RMON for my testing though.

> be. And defining new read-write objects may be.
I agree.  The complexity of the data model and the use cases should
determine
if a writable MIB module is a good idea or not.

I remember bugging Bert and others for about 2 years to even consider
an XML alternative. (NETCONF was originally called XMLCONF).
My experience implementing RMON2 server code and standardizing
really complicated RMON MIBs convinced me that we had passed
the upper-bound of the inherent complexity limits of SNMP/SMIv2.

The CLI had built-in constraints that simplified implementation.
SNMP had an arbitrary set of POKE operations that had to be
somehow converted to a high-level transaction model.
Operators were not asking to do N arbitrary partial edit operations at once,
so this requirement in SNMP proved to be counter-productive.

Chris.

Andy

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