Re: [Isms] status and future of the isms working group

Hi -

> From: "t.petch" <[email protected]>
...
> I think that our resources are limited, and tend to decay with the age of a
> working group, so I would rather see them applied elsewhere.  I look back at the
> effort that went into RFC3411, over many years, and yet it fell at the first
> hurdle, not accommodating the move of security from deep inside the engine to
> off the bottom of the radar; why should we do any better this time?
...

The problem as I see it was that RFC3411 was intended to be the glue
describing how a particular set of specifications fit together, *not* as
*the* architecture for all future SNMP work.  *Requiring* extensions,
additions, and embellishments to adhere to that architecture is in
my opinion a huge mistake.  From my perspective, the real problem
addressed by RFC 3411 was that some of the preceding proposals
for securing SNMP had so many convolutions and interactions that
a lot of folks had trouble wrapping their heads around them.  The
modularity brought by RFC 3411 was modularity of *specification*,
not necessarily implementation.  The ASIs were rather controversial
because folks were (rightly, in retrospect) concerned that they would
be understood in a prescriptive sense, rather than descriptive sense
in which they were intended.

More importantly, I think focusing energy on this "problem" (which is
tempting because it's something we think we understand) would be
a huge distraction from the *real* problem: the kinds of information models
this infrastructure should provide access to.  If the information models
can't support the high-value functions administrators / operators need,
then embellishing the protocol engine architecture is a waste of time.

Randy