|
Attached is the first cut of the requirements document for the Evolution
of SNMP Working Group. This document will be the basis of discussion for the WG
meeting coming up. Input and comments gladly accepted on the list and during
the upcoming meeting. Cheers, /gww |
Network Working Group D. Francisco
INTERNET-DRAFT Cisco Systems
G. Waters
Nortel Networks
March 2001
Evolution of SNMP (EOS) Requirements
<draft-ietf-eos-requirements-00.txt>
Thursday, March 08, 2001, 11:03 PM
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all
provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
A small number of enhancements to the SNMP protocol would provide
substantial improvements in utility and efficiency. The enhancements
must fall within the existing SNMP architecture as defined in RFC
2571. This document describes the enhancements that are proposed in
the initial working group charter.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction......................................................2
2. Requirements of the Enhancements..................................2
2.1. General Requirements.........................................2
2.2. Capabilities of an SNMP Entity...............................2
2.3. Object Identifier Compression................................3
2.4. Efficient Row Creation.......................................3
2.5. Efficient Sub-tree Deletion..................................3
2.6. Efficient Bulk Data Transfer.................................4
3. Intellectual Property.............................................4
4. IANA Considerations...............................................4
5. Acknowledgements..................................................5
6. Security Considerations...........................................5
7. References........................................................5
8. Editor's Addresses................................................5
9. Full Copyright Statement..........................................5
1. Introduction
A small number of enhancements to the SNMP protocol would provide
substantial improvements in utility and efficiency. With improved
efficiency the protocol may gain more widespread use in a number of
network management tasks, including:
o Monitoring of SNMP entities;
o Configuring SNMP entities; and
o Gathering large amounts of data from SNMP entities.
This document describes the initial set of enhancements that the
working group is chartered to pursue. Further requirements documents
may be produced for other features enhancements to the SNMP protocol
should the charter change.
2. Requirements of the Enhancements
2.1. General Requirements
All enhancements must conform to the existing SNMP architecture as
defined by [RFC2571].
2.2. Capabilities of an SNMP Entity
Currently, SNMP entities that conform to [RFC 2571] are expected to
implement all the protocol functionality defined by the standards. It
is not easy to determine which pieces of functionality may be missing
or have been added to the entity. With a number of new incremental
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features being added to SNMP it will be important to be able to easily
determine which features an SNMP entity supports.
Requirements of this feature are:
o It must be easy to determine the features that an SNMP entity
supports;
o It MUST be extensible so that vendor defined features may appear in
the capabilities list.
This feature is not required to:
o List base features of the SNMPv3 protocol.
2.3. Object Identifier Compression
The SNMP PDU contains a set of varBinds within a varBindList. Often,
when there is more than one varBind in the varBindList, any two
consecutive varBinds will contain substantially the same object
identifier in the two varBinds.
Requirements of this feature are:
o To compress the object identifiers in a packet;
o Keep packet encoding and decoding as simple as possible.
2.4. Efficient Row Creation
Management applications may create new rows in a table using the
snmpSet PDU operation and setting the RowStatus object of the row.
While the SNMP protocol provides an easy method of creating a row, the
implementation of this feature in the agent is complex due the
semantics of the RowStatus object. In particular, limiting the
RowStatus such that rows must be created with all appropriate
parameters in a single operation would simplify this feature (e.g.:
createAndWait would not be supported).
Requirements of this feature are:
o For an agent to be able to easily create a row in a table and have
all the parameters required for the row creation available at row
creation time;
2.5. Efficient Sub-tree Deletion
Management applications that wish to synchronize large amounts of
information need to effectively know the state of the information in
both the management application and in the agent. A simple method of
performing the synchronization is to delete the entire set of
information (e.g.: the table) in the agent and reload the agent with
the information from the management application.
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Requirements of this feature are:
o For an agent to delete a sub-tree within its MIB.
2.6. Efficient Bulk Data Transfer
The Internet management community has long recognized that the SNMP
getNext request-response mechanism is inefficient for transferring
large amounts of data. As the size and complexity of network devices
has increased, the problem of bulk SNMP data transfer has become a
critical limiting factor in building management applications. Though
several proprietary solutions to this problem have been proposed and
implemented, a standard solution is needed. The requirements for such
a solution include:
o The most common operations (transferring all or part of a table)
should be easy to specify and implement. In particular, bulk
transfer should be conceptually a single protocol operation within
the SNMP framework;
o Network latency, management traffic, and agent CPU cycles in support
of bulk transfer should be minimized.
3. Intellectual Property
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain
to the implementation or use of the technology described in this
document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or
might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any
effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's
procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-
related documentation can be found in BCP-11.
Copies of claims of rights made available for publication and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification
can be obtained from the IETF Secretariat.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
rights which may cover technology that may be required to practice
this standard. Please address the information to the IETF Executive
Director.
4. IANA Considerations
This document does not introduce any requirements for IANA to manage.
Subsequent documents of the EOS WG will define their IANA requirements
as needed.
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5. Acknowledgements
Thank-you to Jon Saperia and David Partain for their early input on
the requirements that helped to shape the charter of this working
group. Also, thanks to Steve Moulton for the name of the working group
and its acronym 'EOS'.
6. Security Considerations
This document just presents new requirements for the introduction of
new features into the existing SNMP framework. As such, this document
does not in itself introduce any new security considerations. Other
documents that are a product of the EOS WG will define their
appropriate security considerations.
7. References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, BCP 14, March 1997.
[RFC2771] Harington, D., Preshun, R., Wijnen, B., "An Architecture for
Describing SNMP Management Frameworks", RFC 2571, April 1999.
8. Editor's Addresses
Glenn Waters
Nortel Networks
310-875 Carling Avenue,
Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5P1
Canada
Phone: +1 613-765-0249
Email: gww@nortelnetworks.com
Dale Francisco
Cisco Systems
170 W. Tasman Drive
San Jose, California 95134
USA
Phone: +1 408-527-9787
Email: dfrancis@cisco.com
9. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
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