Re: netconf WG charter proposal

[Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>]

At 03:22 PM 4/14/2003 -0700, Randy Presuhn wrote:
>Hi -
>
>> From: "Andy Bierman" <abierman@cisco.com>
>> To: "David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>
>> Cc: "Chen, Weijing" <wchen@tri.sbc.com>; <xmlconf@ops.ietf.org>
>> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 1:21 PM
>> Subject: RE: netconf WG charter proposal
>
>
>...
>> He is saying (and I agree) that the XML data model does not
>> have to use ifIndex to identify the interface.  The agent
>> probably needs to know (internally) the ifIndex mapping for
>> Ethernet0/0, but that doesn't mean that the XML data model
>> must use it.
>....
>
>Not just the agent.  Management systems will also need to know
>the mapping, and at least part of the mapping will need to
>be known by the access control infrastructure.  If there are any
>mid-level entities (as in snmpconf or possibly scripting engines)
>they'll need to know the mapping, too.  What worries me is that
>it won't be just one mapping.  The current discussion sounds as
>though there's potentially a different mapping for every vendor,
>perhaps for every kind of device, and at worst for every single
>device.

A management system won't need to know about a specific mapping
(such as ifIndex to interface name) if all the data models
it uses are consistent.  You seem to be assuming that all
applications will need to use SNMP for something.

The actual format of an interface name, or circuit identifier,
or whatever, is part of the data model problem, outside the
scope of the protocol work.  It may be hard to get all vendors
to agree on standard formats for strings in some cases.  It's
not clear that all applications need to be capable of 
de-constructing these strings though.  They could be treated
simply as system-unique string values, not globally unique
multi-field structures.


>Randy

Andy





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