RFC 1228 (rfc1228) - Page 1 of 50

SNMP-DPI: Simple Network Management Protocol Distributed Program Interface

Network Working Group                                       G. Carpenter
Request for Comments: 1228                                     B. Wijnen
                                  T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp.
                                                                May 1991


                                SNMP-DPI
                   Simple Network Management Protocol
                     Distributed Program Interface

Status of this Memo

   This RFC describes a protocol that International Business Machines
   Corporation (IBM) has been implementing in most of its SNMP agents to
   allow dynamic extension of supported MIBs.  This is an Experimental
   Protocol for the Internet community.  Discussion and suggestions for
   improvement are requested.  Please refer to the current edition of
   the "IAB Official Protocol Standards" for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

ABSTRACT

   The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) [1] Distributed Program
   Interface (DPI) is an extension to SNMP agents that permits end-users
   to dynamically add, delete or replace management variables in the
   local Management Information Base without requiring recompilation of
   the SNMP agent.  This is achieved by writing a so-called sub-agent
   that communicates with the agent via the SNMP-DPI.

   For the author of a sub-agent, the SNMP-DPI eliminates the need to
   know the details of ASN.1 [2] or SNMP PDU (Protocol Data Unit)
   encoding/decoding [1, 3].

   This protocol has been in use within IBM since 1989 and is included
   in the SNMP agents for VM, MVS and OS/2.

   Potentially useful sample sub-agent code and implementation examples
   are available for anonymous FTP from the University of Toronto.

MOTIVATION

   The Simple Network Management Protocol [1] defines a protocol that
   permits operations on a collection of variables.  This set of
   variables is called the Management Information Base (MIB) and a core
   set of variables has previously been defined [4, 5]; however, the
   design of the MIB makes provision for extension of this core set.
   Thus, an enterprise or individual can define variables of their own
   which represent information of use to them.  An example of a



Carpenter & Wijnen