[nmrg] next IRTF-NMRG meeting - proposed agenda

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

I want to put the next meeting under the title "Adding Operations to
the Internet Management Framework".

I believe that the lack to formally describe operations (or commands
if you will Aiko) and the lack of an adequate mechanism to invoke
operations is becoming more and more a serious problem. An example
where this issue shows up is IMHO the COPS/PIB vs. SNMP/MIB debate.
(There are also several other places inside and outside the IETF where
the limitations of the Internet Management Framework to adequately
represent and invoke operations on MIB data are a serious topic.)

To break things down a bit, here is a proposal of subtopics that I
would like to address in the next meeting:

(1) SMIng extensions to formally define operations. I expect that we
    have a concrete proposal by the meeting which is based on
    <draft-irtf-nmrg-smi-ops-00.txt>, but fully integrated into SMIng.
    I would like to discuss any open issues where we do not yet have a
    good answer. Perhaps we can resolve some of them. I would also
    like to see a discussion about the relationship between SMIng and
    CIM in case some CIM experts can attend the meeting. The quesion
    here is whether there is something we can do to make mappings
    easier.

(2) Extension of the current SNMP architecture to support the
    invocation of operations via SNMP. We need to identify which new
    blocks (e.g. SNMP applications) need to be added to the current
    architecture (RFC 2571) to support operations and how these new
    blocks interact with existing blocks (e.g. access control).

(3) New SNMP protocol operations that support the invocation of
    operations. <draft-irtf-nmrg-snmp-ops-00.txt> is a first step into
    this direction. We need to discuss and identify what the precise
    invocation semantics are that we need and which are implementable
    with reasonable effort. We also need to discuss how far we can or
    want to go wrt. support of larger "transactions".

I do not want to devote much time on the bulk transfer issues. I think
we can make progress here on the mailing list and by making prototype
implementations to get some real numbers and we do not necessarily
need a face to face meeting.

But I am of course open for suggestions.

/js