Subject: snmpconf advancement

From: "Harrington, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:24:25 -0400

Hi,

I have been involved with snmpconf, and have reviewed the snmpconf specs
closely, but have always had reservations about some aspects of it. Others
have shared my concerns. 

Some of my concerns are:
1) useability by operators
2) useability by application developers
3) CPU impact on devices
4) scalability

I believe snmpconf could be a very good approach to standardizing management
across vendors, and bringing functional capabilities to SNMP to raise it
above the peek/poke approach, without needing to modify the protocol itself.
These have all been identified as goals of much of the O&M community.

Therefore, as one of the more vocal reviewers of snmpconf, I would like to
request that the ADs approve advancement of this to Proposed Standard, once
submitted by the chairs, so we can determine whether this is an approach
operators and vendors alike can get behind.

I would also like to personally encourage open source developers to produce
a reference implementation, probably as a mid-level manager that translates
snmpconf scripts into mib-specific SNMP commands, so operators can determine
whether the language is sufficiently easy to use, and the CPU overhead can
be measured.

Thanks,
dbh

David Harrington
Network Management Architect
Office of the CTO
Enterasys Networks

---

From: Harrie Hazewinkel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 05:46:54 +0200

--On Wednesday, June 19, 2002 11:24 AM -0400 "Harrington, David" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I would also like to personally encourage open source developers to
> produce a reference implementation, probably as a mid-level manager that
> translates snmpconf scripts into mib-specific SNMP commands, so operators
> can determine whether the language is sufficiently easy to use, and the
> CPU overhead can be measured.

Speaking as someone who works a lot with open-source. An open-source
implementation gets done by two groups;
   1) poeple doing it as study or hobby and
   2) poeple who can do it because there employer supports it.

So is Enterasys willing to sponsor such an effort?? Or others??

cheers,
Harrie

---

From: Steve Waldbusser <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 12:17:38 -0700

I may be interested in collaborating with others on an open-source
implementation.

My game plan would be:
1. Start with the open source Javascript interpreter
2. Write the function library (this is quick and will demonstrate it is only a
small memory footprint)
3. Write the MIB code

At this point you have a running PM MIB mid-level manager/self-manager which is
probably too big to be embedded because of #1 which I presume would be large
(i.e. it isn't subsetted nor written with an embedded system in mind). But it
would be fine for a mid-level manager and for getting some experience. The next
two steps are:

A. Add a CLI function library
B. Write a PolicyScript interpreter from scratch to make it small. I think that
60K-80K is realistic.

The order of implementing A and B is subject to debate but I think that we'd
find it more interesting to do A first because this is just a toy without
access to controllable objects and SNMP doesn't hold a candle to CLI yet.

Anyone else interested?

Steve

---

From: "Bruce Boardman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:04:20 -0400

I'm glad to see this milestone has been reached. I'm interested in
promoting the advancement of network management an I'm hopeful that the
next step will advance the standard to a Proposed status where we'll
find out how useful (or not) SNMPconf is. 
 
Bruce Boardman - Network Management
Network Computing Magazine
c/o Syracuse University
Machinery Hall
Syracuse NY 13244
Lab 315 443-2040 M 516 448-3772
[email-masked]

---

From: Mark Ellison <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 06:31:22 -0400

Hi,

I've been involved with SNMP implementations since 1990 and have also
been actively involved with SNMP related working groups of the IETF.

When discussing SNMP implementation approaches with developers, I have
cited the BCP produced by this working group.  Many have found the
information contained in the BCP memo highly useful when developing the
SNMP agent component of their products.

In reviewing the PM memo it is clear to me this approach is valid and
useful within both the MLM/dual entity role and within the "higher end"
embedded environment.

I do have two considerations:

(1) The methods in the PM memo build upon the current Internet Standard
Management Framework There is a MIB contained in the PM memo, not a PIB,
so I don't understand why the recent IESG treatment of PIBs applies
here.

(2) RFC 2026 sxn 10.3.2. specifies how the IESG treats intellectual
property rights applicable to standards track documents.  I found no
specification on how the IESG treats IPR applicable to an informational
document.

Considerations notwithstanding, I believe the PM memo should be
considered for a status of Proposed Standard.

Regards,

Mark Ellison
Ellison Software Consulting, Inc.
http://www.scguild.com/Resumes/1321R.html