RFC 1109 (rfc1109) - Page 2 of 8

Report of the second Ad Hoc Network Management Review Group

RFC 1109                  Internet Management                August 1989


   The current public subtree of the Internet MIB contains roughly 100
   variables (i.e., managed objects) agreed by the SNMP and CMOT working
   groups as mandatory for Internet network management.  The June 12,
   1989 meeting which this document reports was convened to review the
   progress to date, to determine whether actions were needed to foster
   further evolution of network management tools and to recommend
   specific actions in this area to the IAB.

SNMP STATUS

   Immediately after the meeting reported in RFC 1052, a group was
   convened to make extensions and changes to the predecessor to SNMP:
   Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol.  A "connectathon" was held at
   NYSERNet, an RFC published, and demonstrations of network management
   tools using SNMP were offered in the Fall at Interop 88 [a conference
   and show presented by Advanced Computing Environments (ACE)].  The
   protocol is in use in a number of networks within the Internet as
   well as in private packet networks internationally.  A number of
   vendor implementations are in the field (e.g., cisco Systems,
   Proteon, The Wollongong Group), vendor independent reference
   implementations (e.g., NYSERNet, Case and Key in Tennessee) along
   with some freely available versions (e.g., MIT, CMU).

   It is important to note that while the common Internet Management
   Information Base has roughly 100 variables, a typical SNMP monitoring
   system may support anywhere from 100 to 200 ADDITIONAL objects which
   have been defined in private or experimental MIB space.  Many of
   these are device or protocol dependent variables.

   Scaling to include larger numbers of monitored objects and subsystems
   remains a challenge.  It was observed that fault monitoring was
   easier to scale than performance and configuration monitoring, since
   the former may operate on an exception basis while the latter is more
   likely to require periodic reporting.

CMOT STATUS

   RFC 1095 (CMOT) was recently published and built upon experience
   gained earlier with prototype implementations demonstrated at Interop
   88 in the Fall of that year.  The present specification for CMOT is
   based on the ISO Draft International Standard version of Common
   Management Information Protocol (CMIP).  The CMIP is being moved to
   International Standard status, though the precise timing is not
   perfectly clear.  It will happen late in 1989 or perhaps in the first
   quarter of 1990.  Some changes will be made to correct known errors
   and the CMIP document itself will probably be restructured.

   During this discussion, it was pointed out that there is much to



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