Subject: [midcom] Where we stand/SNMPv3

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 14:13:02 -0500

As things currently stand the two concerns raised regarding
using SNMPv3 as the midcom protocol are 1) lack of interface
to a keying infrastructure, and 2) questions about
transaction rate.  The first is clearly addressable and the
second, I think, remains an open question.  We don't have a
show-stopper. 

This process (working through the list in the order
presented in the evaluation document) is about coming to a
decision, but not coming to a consensus-based decision.
It's absolutely clear that putting the three remaining
protocols in front of the working group and saying "pick
one" wasn't going to produce a consensus decision, either.
In fact it was pretty much guaranteed to produce *no*
decision.  One interested observer described the process as
the working group being in a death spiral, and I don't think
the choice of the word "death" was accidental (more on that
below).

There seems to be an assumption among some working group
participants that if we eliminate all of the existing
protocols from contention we will be rechartered to
undertake development of a protocol from scratch.  That is
absolutely not the case.  I think it's pretty clear that if
we found that none of SNMP, Diameter, and COPS were suitable
the working group would be terminated rather than
rechartered.  We were told that eliminating them was a
precondition for doing one from scratch, but we were never,
ever told that if we were able to do so we would be given
carte blanche to develop a new protocol.

That leaves us with these questions: given that we did not
arrive at SNMPv3 by consensus and given that the likely
alternative is folding up our tent, is there support for
going ahead and developing a midcom MIB and keying framework
for SNMPv3?  Is this something that would be useful and
deployable?  Are there people who would be interested in
doing the work?

Melinda
_______________________________________________
midcom mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/midcom

---

From: Martin Stiemerling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:42:08 +0100

> deployable?  Are there people who would be interested in

To points for SNMP:
- the NAT MIB is already there and the NAT-MIB people think they can 
configure/control a NAT with this MIB.
- our discussion has shown in my eyes that SNMP can do the job, but we 
do not know how good. But the "how good" is as always a matter of 
experience.

So go ahead with SNMP, talk to the NAT-MIB people and get a MIDCOM 
protocol.
Juergen and I both would like to support the definition of the MIDCOM MIB.

Martin