Subject: Extensions for AgentX Version 1

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:11:50 +0200

AgentX verion 1 does not allow a subagent to do the following:

 1) check whether access is allowed to variables that exist 
    in other subagents

 2) read variables that exist in other subagents (with appropriate
    access control applied)

 3) write variables that exist in other subagents (with appropriate
    access control applied)

Some of the DISMAN MIBs that are currently on their way to proposed
standard require to do the operations listed above. This means that it
is impossible to implement and ship these DISMAN MIBs as separate
products that you can plug into your native AgentX master agent.

It might be possible to extend AgentX to provide this capability. The
hardest part of the problem is how you maintain the required input for
the access control function. Shipping this information to the subagent
is probably not a good idea (it would make it pretty easy to mount
guessing attacks from a subagent). However, it might be possible to
find a solution where the master maintains a cache for security
related information and passes only a handle to a subagent, probably
only on a special request from the subagent while processing a read or
write SNMP request.

Anyway, I would like to know if there is interest in extending AgentX
in this direction so that DISMAN MIBs can be implemented based on
AgentX. (Bob, please consider this a request to discuss this during
the AgentX meeting in Chicago. ;-)
							Juergen

Juergen Schoenwaelder  [email-masked] http://www.cs.tu-bs.de/~schoenw
Technical University Braunschweig, Dept. Operating Systems & Computer Networks
Bueltenweg 74/75, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany.        (Tel. +49 531 / 391 3289)