[ipcdn] RE: MIB doctor review of: draft-ietf-ipcdn-pktc-mtamib-01.txt (Part 1)

["Jean-Francois Mule" <[e-mail]>]

Mike and Bert,
 
Find below the first response to all the comments we received to date 
on the pcdn MTA MIB draft 01. 
 
It addresses Bert's comments as well as Mike's comments (#1 thru #10).
We will send our responses to technical comments #11 next week. In the
meantime, if you have any reaction on how we've addressed these so far,
let Eugene or myself know.
 
Thanks,
Eugene and Jean-Francois.
--- Comments from Bert Wijnen received on 7/22/03
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> > 1. PacketCable/IPCablecom MTA MIB 
> > ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ipcdn-pktc-mtamib-01.txt
> >
> > 
> Bad chars at 2053 
> Bad chars at 2056 
> -: 2 lines containing non-US-ASCII characters 
Fixed; replaced ô with double quotes for reference [EN 300 659-1].

>   W: f(ipcdnPktcMta.mi2), (1347,4) NOTIFICATION-GROUP 
>      "pktcMtaNotificationGroup" is not used in a 
>      MODULE-COMPLIANCE in current module 
Fixed; added pktcMtaNotificationGroup in pktcMtaBasicCompliance.

> You IMPORT from IF-MIB (RFC2863) and SNMP-FRAMEWORK-MIB (RFC3411) 
> and SNMPv2-MIB (RFC3418). So those must be listed as normative 
> references 
Added those 3 RFCs as normative references.
Also deleted old informative snmp RFCs.


--- Comments from Mike received on ipcdn list on 7/23/03
> BTW, in addition to Bert's comments below I notice that 
> both draft-ietf-ipcdn-pktc-mtamib-01.txt and 
> draft-ietf-ipcdn-pktc-signaling-01.txt have a 
> second copy of the standard Intellectual Property stuff 
> mixed into the Full Copyright statement. 
Fixed.


--- Comments from Mike received on ipcdn list on 8/11/03

> -----Original Message-----
> From: C. M. Heard [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 10:29 AM
> To: Ipcdn (E-mail)
> Cc: Eugene Nechamkin; Jean-Francois Mule; Bert Wijnen
> Subject: MIB doctor review of: 
> draft-ietf-ipcdn-pktc-mtamib-01.txt (Part 1)
...snip...

> 1.) I-D Boilerplate -- please remove the citation [RFC2026]
> in the first paragraph of the "Status of this Memo" section. 
> See http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html Section 1.1, 8th bullet.
ok, done in draft-02.
Mike, note that ID-nits does not prohibits the reference at all: it
simply says:
# Do not add a numbered reference in the ID boilerplate to RFC 2026
# (makes it harder for the RFC editor to process the document when
# they strip off the ID boilerplate)
So as long as the reference is in the form [RFC2026], I think it is
ok. Anyway, we removed it for this draft per your recommendation.

> 2.) Abstract -- OK
> 
> 3.) MIB Boilerplate -- OK
> 
> 4.) IPR Notices -- (a) the minimum required notices are 
> present, but are not verbatim copies of 10.4(A) and 10.4(B) 
> of RFC 2026, and the editing process has introduced at least 
> one (and possibly three) minor errors or stylistic anomalies 
> that need to be corrected:
> 
> s/described in document/described in this document/
> 
> s/implementers or users/implementors or users/
> 
> s/that may cover technology that/which may cover technology that/
ok, done in draft-02

> (b) no claims are noted (10.4(D) of RFC 2026 is absent), and 
> this appears to be OK since the following search of the IPR 
> statements on the IETF web site did not turn up anything:
...snip...
No action required from co-authors.


> 5.) References -- in addition to the non-ASCII characters in 
> one of the references (detailed in #10(a) below), there are 
> the following substantive issues to address:


> (a) Bert Wijnen already pointed out that:
> > You IMPORT from IF-MIB (RFC2863) and SNMP-FRAMEWORK-MIB 
> (RFC3411) and 
> > SNMPv2-MIB (RFC3418).  So those must be listed as normative 
> > references.
ok, done in draft-02.

> (b) The normative reference [RFC3289] should be removed.  It 
> is not cited anywhere in the text, nor does the 
> PKTC-IETF-MTA-MIB import anything from DIFFSERV-DSCP-TC or 
> DIFFSERV-MIB.
ok, done in draft-02.


> (c) The informative reference [RFC2026] should be removed.  
> It is cited only in the I-D boilerplate, which will be 
> stripped off prior to publication as an RFC and is not 
> allowed to have a citation (see #2 above).
ok, see comment above; done in draft-02.


> (d) The following PacketCable references need to be updated 
> to point to the latest versions of the documents:
> 
> Current reference           Latest version
> 
> PKT-SP-MIB-MTA-I06-030415   PKT-SP-MIB-MTA-I07-030728
> PKT-SP-PROV-I06-030415      PKT-SP-PROV-I07-030728
> PKT-SP-SEC-I08-030415       PKT-SP-SEC-I09-030728
ok, done in draft-02.


> When you make these updates, please be sure to get the 
> spelling of the document number right.  In the current draft 
> I see that all occurrences of [PKT-SP-PROV-IO6-030415] have 
> the letter "O" in "IO6" instead of the numeral "0".  This is 
> also true for the citation of [PKT-SP-MIB-MTA-IO6-030415] at 
> the beginning of Section 3.
ok, done in draft-02.


> You may also want to consider including the URLs where these 
> documents can be found (in addition to including the title 
> and document number):
> 
> http://www.packetcable.com/downloads/specs/PKT-SP-MIB-MTA-I07-
> 030728.pdf
> http://www.packetcable.com/downloads/specs/PKT-SP-PROV-I07-030728.pdf
> http://www.packetcable.com/downloads/specs/PKT-SP-SEC-I09-030728.pdf
The PacketCable specs are revised 3 times a year so this link will
become obsolete soon. Therefore, we would rather not include the
specific URLs, but just http://www.packetcable.com/specifications/

> (e) I could find no citations for the following informative
> references:  
added citation text and informative references to the ETSI and ITU-T
MTA MIB publications:
[ETSI TS 101 909-8] ETSI TS 101 909-8: "Access and Terminals (AT);
                    Digital Broadband Cable Access to the Public
                    Telecommunications Network; IP Multimedia Time
                    Critical Services; Part 8: Media Terminal
                    Adaptor (MTA) Management Information Base
                    (MIB)".

[ITU-T-J168] IPCablecom media terminal adapter (MTA) MIB
             requirements, J.168, ITU-T, March, 2001.

Note that the intent of this ID is to become an IETF RFC that will
obsolete the 3 separate MIB definitions.

> [ETSI TS 101 909-4],
removed.
> [ETSI TS 101 909-9],
removed.
> [EN 300 001],
kept, added citation text in section 3.
> and [EN 300 659-1].
kept, added citation text in section 3.
>  They should either be
> cited or removed.
kep

> (f) Although [RFC3291] is indeed the correct reference for 
> the InetAddress/InetAddressType definitions, there is a 
> possibility that it will be replaced by 
> draft-ietf-ops-rfc3291bis-01.txt or a successor by the time 
> this document is published.  To allow for this possibility I 
> recommend adding an RFC Editor note such as the following:
> 
>   ************************************************************
>   * NOTES TO RFC Editor (to be removed prior to publication) *
>   *                                                          *
>   * 1.) If <draft-ietf-ops-rfc3291bis-01.txt> (or its        *
>   * successor) is to be published as an RFC concurrently     *
>   * with this document, please update normative reference    *
>   * [RFC3291] to point to that RFC, instead of RFC 3291.     *
>   *                                                          *
>   ************************************************************
> 
ok, per Mike's subsequent email to co-authors, we have added the
following text after the reference [RFC3291]:

    ************************************************************
    * NOTES TO RFC Editor (to be removed prior to publication) *
    *                                                          *
    *     The I-D <draft-ietf-ops-rfc3291bis-01.txt> (or a     *
    * successor) is expected to eventually replace RFC 3291.   *
    * If that draft (or a successor) is published as an RFC    *
    * prior to or concurrently with this document, then the    *
    * normative reference [RFC3291] should be updated to       *
    * point to the replacement RFC, and the reference tag      *
    * [RFC3291] should be updated to match.                    *
    *                                                          *
    ************************************************************

> (you may want to consider collecting all RFC Editor
> notes together and putting them at the end, as was
> done in <draft-ietf-atommib-rfc2493bis-01.txt> and 
> <draft-ietf-atommib-rfc2558bis-01.txt> ... but be sure not to 
> eliminate the required embedded notes in the MIB module if 
> you do that)
ok, good idea but not actually done in draft02.


> 6.) Security Considerations Section -- the MIB security 
> template has been followed, but the presentation is not as 
> clear as I would like and there appear to be some some 
> missing and misplaced entries in the lists of writeable 
> objects.  To address the latter the following changes are suggested:
> 
> FROM:
>  ! - All writable objects in the pktcMtaDevServer and
>  ! pktcMtaDevRealmTable groups share the potential, if SET 
> maliciously,  ! to prevent an MTA from provisioning properly, 
> hence there are  ! considered very sensitive for service 
> delivery, in particular:
>        pktcMtaDevProvisioningTimer,
>        pktcMtaDevServerAddressType,
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns1,
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns2 - these two objects, if SET maliciously,
>    will prevent the MTA from being authenticated and 
> consequently from  ! getting the telephony services.
>        pktcMtaDevSnmpEntity,
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigHash,
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigKey,
>        pktcMtaDevProvSolicitedKeyTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmName,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmOrgName,
>  !     pktcMtaDevRealmStatus - this object, if SET maliciously, would
>  ! cause the whole row of the table to be deleted which will 
> deny the  ! prevent the MTA from getting the telephony services.
> TO:
>  ! - All writable objects in the pktcMtaDevServer group and 
> some in  ! the pktcMtaDevRealmTable share the potential, if 
> SET maliciously,  ! to prevent an MTA from provisioning 
> properly.  Hence they are  ! considered very sensitive for 
> service delivery.  In particular:
>        pktcMtaDevProvisioningTimer,
>        pktcMtaDevServerAddressType,
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns1,
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns2 - these two objects, if SET maliciously,
>    will prevent the MTA from being authenticated and 
> consequently from  ! getting telephony services.
>  +     pktcMtaDevTimeServer,
>  +     pktcMtaDevConfigFile,
>        pktcMtaDevSnmpEntity,
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigHash,
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigKey,
>        pktcMtaDevProvSolicitedKeyTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmName,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmOrgName,
>  +     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout,
>  +     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout,
>  +     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries,
>  !     pktcMtaDevRealmStatus - this object, if SET maliciously, could
>  ! cause the whole row of the table to be deleted which may 
> prevent  ! MTA from getting telephony services.
Ok, done in draft-02.


> FROM:
>    - All writable objects in the pktcMtaDevCmsTable table share the
>    potentional, if SET maliciously, to disrupt the telephony 
> service by
>    altering which Call Management Server the MTA must send signaling
>    registration to, in particular:
>        pktcMtaDevCmsFqdn,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsKerbRealmName,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsMaxClockSkew,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsSolicitedKeyTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout,
>  !     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries - this object, 
> if set to
>  ! a zero value '0', may prevent an MTA from retry its attempt to
>    establish a security association with the CMS,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsStatus.
> TO:
>    - All writable objects in the pktcMtaDevCmsTable table share the
>    potentional, if SET maliciously, to disrupt the telephony 
> service by
>    altering which Call Management Server the MTA must send signaling
>    registration to, in particular:
>        pktcMtaDevCmsFqdn,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsKerbRealmName,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsMaxClockSkew,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsSolicitedKeyTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout,
>  !     pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries - this object, if set to
>  ! a zero value '0', may prevent an MTA from retrying its attempt to
>    establish a security association with the CMS,
>        pktcMtaDevCmsStatus.
ok, done in draft-02.

> FROM:
>    - The following objects, if SET maliciously will not have an
>    immediate effect on service but they may impact the service
>    performace and may cause avalanche attacks on provisioning servers
>    including Kerberos KDC servers on massive device reboots:
>        pktcMtaDevResetKrbTickets - if set to true, will cause 
> an MTA to
>    request a new Kerberos ticket at reboot.
>        pktcMtaDevRealmPkinitGracePeriod - if set to short 
> periods, will
>    cause MTA to renew its tickets more frequently,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmTgsGracePeriod (same as above).
>  -     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout,
>  -     pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout.
> TO:
>    - The following objects, if SET maliciously will not have an
>    immediate effect on service but they may impact the service
>    performace and may cause avalanche attacks on provisioning servers
>    including Kerberos KDC servers on massive device reboots:
>        pktcMtaDevResetKrbTickets - if set to true, will cause 
> an MTA to
>    request a new Kerberos ticket at reboot.
>        pktcMtaDevRealmPkinitGracePeriod - if set to short 
> periods, will
>    cause MTA to renew its tickets more frequently,
>        pktcMtaDevRealmTgsGracePeriod (same as above),
> 
> (changed lines indicated by '!' in left margin, added lines 
> by '+', deleted lines by '-').
ok, done in draft-02.


> Note that suggested addition/regrouping of objects in the 
> lists above assumes that
> 
>    pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout
>    pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout
>    pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries
> 
> are for communication with a Key Distribution Center (KDC) 
> and so can affect the provisioning process whilst
> 
>    pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout
>    pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout
>    pktcMtaDevCmsUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries
> 
> are used for communication with a Call Management server 
> (CMS) and so can affect telephony services but not 
> provisioning (that, at least, is what I concluded from 
> Section 3.4 and from the object DESCRIPTION clauses).
correct.

> Even with the above fixes the Security Considerations section 
> would not be a model of clarity.  The problem is that the 
> presentation style doesn't make it perfectly clear exactly 
> what vulnerabilities are associated with each object.  Here 
> is an example of a possibly better style for the first section above:
> 
>    - All writable objects in the pktcMtaDevServer group and some in
>    the pktcMtaDevRealmTable share the potential, if SET maliciously,
>    to prevent an MTA from provisioning properly.  Hence they are
>    considered very sensitive for service delivery.  The objects in
>    question are:
> 
>        pktcMtaDevProvisioningTimer
>        pktcMtaDevServerAddressType
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns1
>        pktcMtaDevServerDns2
>        pktcMtaDevTimeServer
>        pktcMtaDevConfigFile
>        pktcMtaDevSnmpEntity
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigHash
>        pktcMtaDevProvConfigKey
>        pktcMtaDevProvSolicitedKeyTimeout
>        pktcMtaDevRealmName
>        pktcMtaDevRealmOrgName
>        pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxTimeout
>        pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyNomTimeout
>        pktcMtaDevRealmUnsolicitedKeyMaxRetries
>        pktcMtaDevRealmStatus
> 
>    Certain of the above objects have additional specific 
> vulnerabilites.
>    pktcMtaDevServerDns1 and pktcMtaDevServerDns2, if SET maliciously,
>    could prevent the MTA from being authenticated and 
> consequently from
>    getting telephony services.  pktcMtaDevRealmStatus, if SET
>    maliciously, could cause the whole row of the table to be deleted
>    which may prevent MTA from getting telephony services.
ok, done in draft-02.

> 
> The authors may wish to consider reworking the style of the 
> entire section to something along these lines.  
ok, see attempt we made to improve the section in draft-02.
In addition, we deleted 2 security consideration paragraphs on 2
readable objects: pktcMtaDevEndPntCount and pktcMtaDevHttpAccess.
After more reviews, we do not believe those objects actually pose real
threats given that the endpoint naming convention is in the spec and
easy to figure out and that pktcMtaDevHttpAccess text was not really
relevant.

> It would also 
> be good to make consistent statements about retry objects, 
> RowStatus objects, and so on in the different lists.
> 
> Finally, this section includes only the standard "deployment 
> of SNMP versions prior to SNMPv3 is NOT RECOMMENDED."  It has 
> been my understanding that versions of SNMP prior to SNMPv3 
> are not permitted for DOCSIS devices.  If that's true, then 
> the last paragraph should say that instead of the standard stuff.
For MTAs, anything other than SNMPv3 is not recommended in our current
specs - at least that is true today for PacketCable. The issue we're
facing is some service providers still have SNMPv2.
So we decided it is sufficient to leave this section as-is per the
recommendation of http://www.ops.ietf.org/mib-security.html and take
the 2 last paragraphs of mib-security.html as-is.



> 7.) IANA Considerations Section -- OK (none present and none 
> required).
> 
> 8.) Copyright notices -- the Full Copyright statement has a 
> second copy of the standard Intellectual Property notices in 
> front of it. That shouldn't be there and needs to be removed.
ok, done in draft-02.

> 9.) MIB compilation -- Bert already pointed out the following 
> warning message from SMICng:
> 
>  W: f(ipcdnPktcMta.mi2), (1347,4) NOTIFICATION-GROUP
>     "pktcMtaNotificationGroup" is not used in a
>     MODULE-COMPLIANCE in current module
ok, done in draft-02, included pktcMtaNotificationGroup into
MANDATORY-GROUPS.
> 
> The smilint e-mail robot says the same thing:
> 
>  This command (smilint 0.4.2-pre1, as of Wed Jul 23 17:37:01 
> 2003)  has been processed to get the following results:  
> smilint -m -s -l 6 -i namelength-32 PKTC-IETF-MTA-MIB
> 
>  PKTC-IETF-MTA-MIB:1340: [5] {group-unref} warning: current 
> group  `pktcMtaNotificationGroup' is not referenced in this module
> 
> Although this is not a violation of the SMIv2 rules, we 
> recommend in the MIB review guidelines that a GROUP clause be 
> present for each optional group so that it is obvious that it 
> was not an inadvertent omission; see 
> <draft-ietf-ops-mib-review-guidelines-01.txt>,
> Sec. 4.8, last bullet on p. 23.  In this case it appears that 
> this group was indeed inadvertently omitted from the 
> MANDATORY-GROUPS clause;  see #11(w) below for details.
Fixed.

> 
> 10.) Other issues, e.g., stuff in 
> http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html that is not covered above:
> 
> (a) Bert Wijnen noted 2 lines containing non-US-ASCII characters:
> > > Bad chars at 2053
> > > Bad chars at 2056
> > > -: 2 lines containing non-US-ASCII characters
Fixed.

> 
> The fix that I recommend is to change the text starting at line 2053
> from:
>    [EN 300 659-1] EN 300 659-1: ôPublic Switched Telephone Network 
>                   (PSTN); Subscriber line protocol over the 
> local loop 
>                   for display (and related) services; Part 1: On hook 
>                   data transmissionö. 
> to:
>    [EN 300 659-1] EN 300 659-1: "Public Switched Telephone Network 
>                   (PSTN); Subscriber line protocol over the 
> local loop 
>                   for display (and related) services; Part 1: On hook 
>                   data transmission". 
> assuming, of course, that this reference is retained.
ok, ref deleted.


> (b) There are a few lines that go over 72 characters, 
> however, that goes away if the trailing blanks are removed.  
> It would be nice to fix that in the next version of the 
> draft, but it's not essential, since the trailing blanks are 
> stripped by the RFC Editor do that as a side-effect of 
> "nroff'ing" the document.
ok, no action taken.

> 
> (c) Please make the following change globally: s/RFC-3495/RFC 
> 3495/ Note that the MIB module and the reference [RFC3495] 
> are affected.
ok, done in draft-02.

> 
> (d) Section 2.2:  s/over the DOCSIS/over a DOCSIS/
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (e) Section 2.3:  s/the cable or hybrid system/a cable or 
> hybrid system/ (multiple occurrences);  s/the CM part/the CM part,/
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (f) Section 2.8:  Consider appending the following sentence:
> 
>  Commonly used DHCP options are defined in [RFC2132].
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (g) Section 2.10:  s/algorithm/device/
comment rejected by co-authors, not changed.
> 
> (h) Section 2.11:  s/system of the back office/a system of 
> back office/
ok, done in draft-02.

> 
> (i) Section 3.1, 5th paragraph:  s/First two groups/The first 
> two groups/
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (j) Section 3.1, 6th paragraph:  s/Third group/The third group/
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (k) Section 3.2, 1st paragraph:  suggest to revise as follows:
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
>  This group contains management information describing the 
> parameters  of the MTA device itself.  It also contains some 
> objects to control  the MTA state.  Some highlights are as follows:
> 
> (l) Section 3.3, 1st paragraph:  suggest to revise as follows:
> 
>  This group contains management information describing the 
> back  office servers and the parameters assigned to the 
> communication  timeouts.  It also contains some objects 
> controlling the initial  MTA interaction with the Provisioning Server.
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (m) Section 3.4, 1st paragraph:  suggest to revise as follows:
> 
>  This group contains management information describing the  
> security-related characteristics of the MTA.  It also 
> contains  two tables describing logical dependencies and 
> parameters necessary  to establish security associations 
> between the MTA and other  components of the back office.  
> Some higliights are:
ok, done in draft-02.
> 
> (n) Section 3.5:  add blank lines between consecutive 
> paragraphs, and also before and after each bullet item in the 
> bullet list. Please rewrite the 2nd paragraph so that it is 
> clear what it means. In the 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph 
> after the bullet list s/defined by the number of 
> parameters/defined by a number of parameters/ Please use the 
> definite and indefinite articles when customary (e.g., 
> s/Realm Table is indexed/The Realm Table is indexed/ and 
> s/contains conceptual column/contains a conceptual column).  
> This whole section is hard to read and needs major editorial rework.
ok, done in draft-02.
> end.