Re: SNMP improvements

["David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>]

HI,

On the following...
At 07:48 AM 9/18/2003 -0700, chintan sheth wrote:
>So are we going on the path where netconf protocol is
>expected to replace SNMP completely? For SNMP lovers
>this won't be good news.
>
>thx,
>chintan
For the people that I have worked with in the IETF, many for over
12 years, the issue is not whether or not the management protocol is
SNMP, but whether or not that cost effective management will be done.
Over this time, there have been many proposals for new management
approaches. Typically it goes like the following:
  1) someone comes up with a simple approach to solve a small
     problem
  2) they believe that it can be used to solve other problems
  3) in attempting to develop it and deploy it they find:
      a) limitations of the approach come to light
      b) the true costs become clear, and are typically higher than thought
      c) the data model becomes messy due to 
         i) continued support for deployed products
        ii) creation of support for new technologies before
            the usage issues of the technology is fully understood
            (A fundamental problem of management - until you build
             and deploy products with a new technology, you do not
             know what needs to be configured, and monitored.)
After it is all done, there is been little real progress. However,
there are aspects of the XMLCONF proposal that excite some of us
that if may provide some real forward progress.

>--- Wes Hardaker <wjhns1@hardakers.net> wrote:
>> >>>>> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 22:10:34 -0700, Andy
>> Bierman <abierman@cisco.com> said:
>> 
>> Andy> Also, I don't understand why "fixing" SNMP is
>> so important
>> Andy> anyway.  The industry has decided SNMP is good
>> for monitoring
>> Andy> and notifications, and it does a great job in
>> both cases.
>> 
>> I agree that its good for monitoring and
>> notifications, but I disagree
>> it does a great job in both cases.  It still suffers
>> problems, like
>> bulking as Dinakaran pointed out.  It also suffers
>> from lack of
>> current data types, a lack of security that matches
>> current security
>> deployment sceneries, ...  It *has* been good and
>> continues to be good
>> for many situations.  It does, however, suffer from
>> all the problems
>> that started EOS and SMIng in the first place.  Some
>> of those
>> problems, like dealing with hierarchal
>> configuration, can be thrown
>> out since netconf might take care of them (note I
>> only say might
>> because it still needs to be proven in an
>> interoperable fashion
>> [juniper has proven it can work in a
>> non-interoperable way which is a
>> huge start]).  I still believe we need to fix SNMP
>> in a few cases, and
>> I agree that the number of cases has hopefully been
>> reduced.  If,
>> however, we expect it to be used in the future along
>> with netconf, as
>> you suggest, then it could use some minor revamps.
>> 
>> -- 
>> "In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to
>> hold than the soap,
>>  and much more difficult to find."  -- Terry
>> Pratchett
>> 
>
>
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