RE: sming meeting minutes draft... Questions for the wg.

Hi,

I once interviewed for a job with a company that had two products. One =
product was the brand new product based on the latest programming =
langauges, and that product got plenty of resources, promotion, etc., =
and was the product one wanted to be associated with because that was =
the product that company management obviously valued. The other product =
was being discontinued, but required support until its successor was =
ready. The people who worked on that product were likely to be denied =
resources, marketing would not promote the product, and at some point =
the resources associated with that product would be eliminated. They had =
trouble finding people motivated to work on the discontinued product.

The IETF needs to make a decision about what role they want SNMP and the =
SMI and COPS/PR and SPPI to play. If they want to discontinue them and =
replace them with XML, then let's close down all related work and move =
everybody to the new product, and get the new product ready faster. If =
the IETF wants to keep them, but continue to maintain them until the =
replacement is ready, then SMI and EOS seem to be overshooting the goal; =
we should keep mib development, but not bother to work on changing the =
protocol or the SMI.

I fail to be motivated to work on these documents, or to recruit people =
from my company to work on these documents, because I cannot see what =
role SNMP and SMIv3 are expected to play in the future of IETF network =
management.=20

Note that I said that the IETF needs to make a decision, not that the =
ADs need to make a decision. I have argued for an architecture, and the =
ADs have responded they do not want to dictate a top-down architecture. =
I agree that such is a wise decision on their part. The IETF =
participants of the O&M Area need to make thei rvoices heard as to what =
they want for the future of O&M directions, especially network =
management. In my discussions with NM folk at the last IETF meeting, =
there was a tremendous lack of enthusiasm. I think it was because most =
people feel the same way; we don't want to work on a protocol that is =
being discontinued.=20

I think that what Bert is asking is, "do you care enough about keeping =
SNMP going to volunteer to do some of the work of keeping SNMP going?"

My personal answer is that I think there are simpler solutions that will =
yield better results for making SNMP useful to people now, within the =
limited monitoring role that seems to be the IETF future for SNMP. I =
suggest there is more potential short-term benefit from projects like a =
compressed PDU, a key distribution mechanism for SNMPv3, AES support for =
SNMPv3, informational documents that describe how to use the mibs that =
already exist so agent developers can understand why they should support =
all the different objects in a mib (and so we can eliminate the really =
non-useful objects in the standard mibs), and small scripts written in =
Perl or Ksh or whatever to give operators the tools to test whether mibs =
have been reasonably well implemented before they commit to final =
purchase of products. These types of activities would hopefully improve =
the quality and deployability of the SNMP solutions that already exist, =
to make SNMP more useful to operators.

my $.02
dbh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Durham, David [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 4:53 PM
> To: 'Wijnen, Bert (Bert)'; [email protected]
> Subject: RE: sming meeting minutes draft... Questions for the wg.
>=20
>=20
> Originally there was much excitement around the smi-ds=20
> proposal from the wg
> participants. Now that we are peeling back the onion a bit I=20
> think we are
> seeing some of the complexities of this approach emerge, and we are
> experiencing some notable feature creep as well. So I wonder if the wg
> sentiment is cooling and why. Two fundamental questions that=20
> I would like
> people to (quickly) respond:
>=20
> Are people still interested in perusing the hierarchical=20
> instance naming
> using oids as proposed in the smi-ds document?=20
>=20
> Are you interested in helping by being an editor on one or more of the
> documents listed below?
>=20
>=20
> If feature creep and gratuitous changes are the only issues, that is
> fixable. I want to understand if the fundamentals of the=20
> smi-ds proposal are
> still viable and have wg support.
>=20
> -Dave
>=20
>=20
>=20
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Wijnen, Bert (Bert) [mailto:[email protected]]
> > Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 4:48 AM
> > To: Durham, David; [email protected]
> > Subject: RE: sming meeting minutes draft...
> >=20
> > I'd like to get a few more details on this (I think we got them
> > at the meeting):
> >=20
> > > Revisited Charter and Milestones. Updated charter was put on
> > > the mailing list. No issues raised on the list, no issues
> > > raised at the meeting either. According to the charter
> > > milestones we are a year behind. The original milestones
> > > assumed the nmrg documents which were complete, but the wg
> > > chose to investigate the smi-ds route. We will still need a
> > > few iterations on the smi-ds/v3 documents before they will be
> > > complete. The current proposed list of documents in=20
> priority order is:
> > >
> > > -        1. SMIv3 Language Definition: Andy Bierman
> > > -        2. Capabilities MIB: Andy Bierman: DONE
> > > -        3. SMIv3 Guidelines
> > > -        4. Transition from SMIv2
> > > -        5. SMIv3 MIB Modules (core types)
> > > -        6. INET Modules (textual conventions)
> > > -        7. RFC 2580 Conformance Updates
> > >
> > > We need volunteers for the documents or the wg will shut
> > > down, and the smi will not progress. Previous volunteers for
> > > the guidelines and transition documents are waiting for the
> > > language definition. In principle, people support the smi-ds
> > > work, but we will need people to sign up to get the work
> > > done. Likewise from the discussion at the wg meeting it seems
> > > that there is a lot of waffling on how we proceed item by
> > > item through the open issues listed below.
> > >
> > My understanding at the meeitng was that Andy=20
> un-volunteered for some
> > docs. And so I like to clearly understand who is currently volunteer
> > for what. I also like to see commitments as follows:
> >=20
> > - Volunteers to commit to deliver a reasonable revision of the
> >   document they volunteer for
> > - From the WG to do serious review and to provide serious input
> >   for the editors and the chair, so that we can get to consensus.
> >=20
> > The lack of WG participation and the lack of enthusiastic volunteers
> > for all documents does not bode well. And as David said, we're
> > already 1 year behind schedule.
> >=20
> > Thanks, Bert
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