Subject: snmpconf Document Summaries

From: "Jon Saperia" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 08:37:32 -0500

As David Harrington noted yesterday, there will be a number of postings 
about the tasks planned for each of the three deliverables on the current
charter that we are working on. These are:

    1. A Best Current Practices Document
    2. A MIB Module - the Capabilities and Capacities MIB Module
    3. A MIB Module - the Differentiated Services Policy MIB Module

Before we start posting individual work items, it might be helpful to give a
bit of additional information to that already posted on the charter page
found at:

    http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/snmpconf-charter.html

1. Best Current Practices Document

The Best Current Practices Document will be designed to recommend how to
best to design, implement and deploy configuration management systems based
on the Internet Standard Management Framework (SNMP). Some important goals
for this work include the ability to coexist with other management access
methods such as a Command Line Interface.

For the purposes of this document, configuration management includes what we
have historically called device or instance specific configuration data.
Examples of this are per instance/interface IP address or subnet
information. This document also includes best current practices for
realizing what has come to be known as policy (or network-wide)
configuration management.  The most common example of this type of
configuration activity is the expression of Quality of Service policy to
managed devices. The other deliverables currently on the working group
charter will address MIB Modules which will facilitate policy based
management.

Another area of the BCP Document is to include how to tie together, fault,
configuration and other types of management into an integrated system using
the SNMP Framework.

Additional details about this document will be published over the next few
days.

For additional information on the BCP series see the initial document:

    ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/bcp/bcp1.txt

2. The Capabilities and Capacities MIB Module

In order to effectively perform either device specific, or network wide
policy configuration it is necessary to know what capabilities and capacity
for performing a particular type of work a device has. This MIB module will
be used to convey to management systems the abilities of a device to carry
out policy (e.g., deliver a particularly quality of service to IP packets
with a specific DSCP value) as well as its capacity for taking on that work.
This MIB will also have indices which connect it to MIB Modules which carry
policy information and through them MIB Modules which carry related instance
specific information.

3. The Differentiated Services Policy MIB Module

The focus of the snmpconf WG is not exclusive to differentiated services. A
policy MIB for this area is provided partly because it has been a catalyst
for interest in policy based management and many people strongly believe in
the need to be able to efficiently convey to a managed device this type of
configuration information. This module will also be used to show how device
specific and policy based configuration can be integrated in a single system
through the use of the Capability and Capacity MIB Module, Policy MIB
Modules such as the Differentiated Services Policy MIB Module, and other
standard modules such as the Differentiated

Unlike many other extant MIB Modules, this module will not convey instance
specific information but will act as a potential source of information which
a managed entity can use to create instance specific information. As such
there are likely to be pointers to the Management Information Base for the
Differentiated Services Architecture currently under development in the
Differentiated Services WG.

/jon