Re: Management Requirements

On Tue, Aug 07, 2012 at 03:29:52PM -0400, Ronald Bonica wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> The BEHAVE WG brings us a concrete example of a problem that we discussed in Vancouver. According to their charter, the BEHAVE WG "creates documents to enable IPv4/IPv4 and IPv6/IPv4 NATs to function in as deterministic a fashion as possible." Also, according to their charter, the BEHAVE WG "will update the NAT MIB (RFC 4008) to be
> consistent with the management aspects of its IPv6/IPv4 NAT solutions, and specify IPFIX information elements to meet logging requirements, reusing existing elements, if possible."
> 
> Now BEHAVE is asking whether SNMP and IPFIX are the right tools. Maybe NETCONF is the right tool for configuration? Maybe SNMP is right for fault monitoring? Maybe syslog is right for maintaining a record of address mappings? Who knows?
> 

For configuration, NETCONF/YANG is the right choice. There is nothing
that really competes for configuration.

For event notifications, you have at least SYSLOG, SNMP notifications,
IPFIX, NETCONF notifications. I think the last one is likely not a
main target. SNMP notifications means one SNMP message per event and
the same holds true for SYSLOG; IPFIX allows to send a collection of
events in one IPFIX message and hence it might be more scalable, which
might be important for some NAT deployments.

For retrieving operational state and debugging, both SNMP and NETCONF
can work. If the data structures tend to be more complex and/or the
data instances are of larger volume, NETCONF has some advances (more
efficient bulk transfer). If data needs to travel over shaky links
(e.g. high levels of packet loss), SNMP _can_ have an advantage.

Perhaps these thoughts help to make a suitable decision. One could of
course also ask what the contributors prefer to implement, e.g. what
they expect to ease integration into management systems relevant for
the protocol domain.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>