RFC 2788 (rfc2788) - Page 3 of 22

Network Services Monitoring MIB

RFC 2788            Network Services Monitoring MIB           March 2000


   o   Protocol operations for accessing management information. The
       first set of protocol operations and associated PDU formats is
       described in STD 15, RFC 1157 [10]. A second set of protocol
       operations and associated PDU formats is described in RFC 1905
       [15].

   o   A set of fundamental applications described in RFC 2573 [16] and
       the view-based access control mechanism described in RFC 2575
       [17].

   Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed
   the Management Information Base or MIB.  Objects in the MIB are
   defined using the mechanisms defined in the SMI.

   This memo specifies a MIB module that is compliant to the SMIv2. A
   MIB conforming to the SMIv1 can be produced through the appropriate
   translations. The resulting translated MIB must be semantically
   equivalent, except where objects or events are omitted because no
   translation is possible (use of Counter64). Some machine readable
   information in SMIv2 will be converted into textual descriptions in
   SMIv1 during the translation process. However, this loss of machine
   readable information is not considered to change the semantics of the
   MIB.

2.  Rationale for having a Network Services Monitoring MIB

   Much effort has been expended in developing tools to manage lower
   layer network facilities.  However, relatively little work has been
   done on managing application layer entities.  It is neither efficient
   nor reasonable to manage all aspects of application layer entities
   using only lower layer information. Moreover, the difficulty of
   managing application entities in this way increases dramatically as
   application entities become more complex.

   This leads to a substantial need to monitor applications which
   provide network services, particularly distributed components such as
   MTAs and DSAs, by monitoring specific aspects of the application
   itself.  Reasons to monitor such components include but are not
   limited to measuring load, detecting broken connectivity, isolating
   system failures, and locating congestion.

   In order to manage network service applications effectively two
   requirements must be met:

   (1) It must be possible to monitor a large number of components
       (typical for a large organization).





Freed & Kille               Standards Track