Network Management Area

Director(s):


   o James Davin:  jrd@ptt.lcs.mit.edu


Area Summary reported by James Davin/MIT

At the San Diego meeting of the IETF, seven working groups of the
Network Management Area held one or more sessions throughout the week.
Also, three Birds of a Feather sessions were held.  Owing to a brief
hiatus in pending MIB reviews, the SNMP Network Management Directorate
did not meet.

Chassis MIB Working Group (CHASSIS)

The Chassis MIB Working Group met for the first time at the San Diego
IETF meeting.  This Working Group will produce a document describing MIB
objects for use in a ``chassis'' --- which is a collection of
traditionally discrete network devices packaged in a single cabinet and
power supply.  A chassis may comprise, for example, combinations of
layer 1 repeater elements, MAC layer bridges, or internetwork layer
routers.

The Working Group discussed the optional items of its charter.  It
decided to address the instrumentation of power supplies and other
physical properties of a chassis box by attempting to align existing
proprietary MIBs in these areas.  The co-chair will prepare a
distillation of such MIBs for consideration at the next meeting.

The Working Group also decided that development of an ``aggregation
MIB'' for instrumenting aggregate properties of a collection of network
elements was worthy of effort but that work in that direction should not
be permitted to interfere with the highest priority goal of the Group
--- to wit, a MIB to represent the mapping of logical network devices
onto the physical components of a chassis.

The Working Group heard two presentations about the possible shape of a
chassis MIB. Draft documents will be prepared and discussed at the next
meeting.

DS1/DS3 MIB Working Group (TRUNKMIB)

The TRUNKMIB Working Group is chartered to formulate any necessary
revisions to the DS1 and DS3 transmission MIBs (RFC 1232 and RFC 1233)
as these specifications are considered for elevation from Proposed
Standard to Draft Standard status.  The Group is considering those
changes motivated by implementation experience and those motivated by
the desire to align with relevant work within ANSI T1M1.  The Working
Group discussed what changes to the MIB might be desirable in order to


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support both traditional transmission interfaces as well as proxy
representation of discrete CSU/DSU devices.  The Working Group also
discussed identified conformance groupings of the MIB objects that
better reflect existing implementations.  A number of issues remain
outstanding, and it is hoped that these can be resolved by an email
discussion of revised drafts.

Ethernet MIB Working Group (ETHERMIB)

The Ethernet MIB Working Group met to continue its work on conformance
issues related to the MIB for Ethernet-like transmission media.
Discussion took a giant step forward with the presentation of data on
the implementation of objects defined in the current Ethernet MIB. Based
on this data, the Group decided to reduce significantly the number of
required MIB objects.  The Group also worked on documenting the
rationale for remaining objects.

Host Resources MIB BOF (HOSTMIB)

A Birds of a Feather session on SNMP instrumentation of host resources
was conducted by Steve Waldbusser of CMU. An emphasis in this discussion
was the need for commonality among existing proprietary MIBs that
instrument various types of resources frequently associated with
internet hosts (e.g., processing capacity, memory, disk space).  The
consensus of those assembled was that internet hosts include not only
Unix machines but also various types of personal computers.  A number of
participants attributed some urgency to the need for commonality in this
area, and many felt that forward progress was desirable.  Organization
of a working group effort with a practical, limited scope and timeframe
is likely.

IEEE 802.3 Hub MIB Working Group (HUbmib)

This Working Group met to discuss the current draft of a SNMP MIB for
802.3 Repeater devices.  The Group resolved outstanding issues about the
treatment of counter totals for repeater implementations whose physical
configuration may change dynamically.  The penultimate revision of the
repeater MIB will be circulated via electronic mail for review by the
Working Group members.  The Working Group also discussed strategies for
developing SNMP MIB instrumentation for 802.3 medium access units based
on recent IEEE definitions.

Internet Accounting Working Group (ACCT)

This Working Group met in two sessions during the San Diego IETF meeting
during which the efforts of the Group were effectively concluded.  The
final revision of the Accounting Architecture document will be prepared
and reviewed by Working Group members via electronic mail.  This
document is intended for publication as an Informational RFC. An SNMP
MIB to support the accounting architecture was discussed at the meeting.
A final revision of this MIB definition will be prepared to reflect

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comments made at the meeting and will be reviewed via electronic mail.
The final MIB text is intended for publication as an Experimental RFC.
With the successful completion of its charter, no further meetings of
this Working Group are anticipated.

Multiplexing SNMP Agents BOF (MPLXMIB)

A Birds of a Feather session on composite SNMP agent implementations was
conducted by Karl Auerbach of Sun Microsystems.  The purpose of the
session was to discuss the problem of SNMP agent implementations that
may be composed of software units from different sources.  A
comprehensive list of technical issues and constraints was presented and
discussed.  At least five distinct approaches were identified as
appropriate depending on the goals of the implementor, the
implementation environment, or other circumstances:

   o Strategies based on SNMP proxy using SNMP security mechanisms,
   o SMUX (RFC 1227),
   o DPI (RFC 1228),
   o Application software conventions, and
   o Operating system software technologies.


Remote LAN Monitoring Working Group (RMONMIB)

This was both the final session of the RMONMIB Working Group and the
first ``unofficial'' session of the Token Ring Remote Monitoring Working
Group.  Its Charter is to extend the work begun in the Remote LAN
Monitoring MIB (RFC 1271) to the domain of IEEE 802.5 Token Ring media.
The Group spent much of its time discussing the first draft of a MIB
specification to support token ring monitoring.  Among the issues raised
was the extent to which the defined instrumentation ought to be oriented
towards promiscuous or non-promiscuous models of token ring monitoring.
Discussion of a revised version of the specification will continue at
the next meeting.

SNMP Agent Description BOF (SNMPAGEN)

This BOF on the utility and desirability of the notation described in
RFC 1303, was conducted by Dave Perkins of SynOptics.  This notation is
designed to document those respects in which a particular SNMP agent
implementation may deviate from standardized protocol and MIB
specifications.  Part of the session was devoted to the identification
and discussion of possible problems or improvements to the notation
itself.  A recurring theme of the session was whether the effect of the
proposed notation would be more to document agent ``variations'' or more
to document agent ``deficiencies.''  Opinion was mixed on this issue,
and, accordingly, opinion was mixed on the desirability of this or like
notations.

X.25 Management Information Base Working Group (X25MIB)


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The X.25 MIB Working Group met twice during the San Diego IETF meeting.
One session focused on issues of MIB form and structure; another session
focused on the X.25 protocol functionality being instrumented.  Based on
this discussion, a penultimate revision of the LAPB and X.25 Packet
Layer MIBs will be circulated on the mailing list for final review and
closure.  A remaining task for this Working Group is to rework the MIB
instrumenting IP over X.25 convergence functions to embrace recent work
in the Internet Services Area on multiprotocol use of X.25.



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