Re: Using X.500 to determine presentationAddresses

["James W. Hong" <[e-mail]>]

> 
> Peter et al,
> 
> My apologies for such a late reply. 
> 
> The open issue I see here is the naming of the machines. 
> During the last month I have spent many hours thinking of an 
> architecture for a location transparency mechanism that 
> will be using the X.500 to retrieve presentationAddresses 
> of management agents in a management platform.
> 
> Roughly speaking I want to be able to identify the 
> presentationAddress of a management agent (e.g. SNMP 
> agent) that contains management information for some 
> network element. (By the term "network element" I mean 
> equipment attached to the network (e.g. a router, 
> a gateway, a workstation) ).  
> Clearly, what I need first is a global, unique and stable 
> naming schema for registering network elements in the DIT. 
> 
> Bearing in mind the "Charting Networks in the Directory" 
> (OSI-DS-37) draft document I thought that maybe a refinement 
> of the mechenism described there could be used for globally 
> naming network elements within the Directory.
> Of course the above naming schema results in machine names 
> that are far away from user-friendly.  
> 
> As Steve writes:
> >The decisions on naming machines should be primarily dictated by
> > 1) Reasonable names for the machines
> > 2) A naming structure which permits effective allocation.
> >I would expect that some key services would be named at the ARC level,
> >and the majority of machines at the departmental or project level
> >(i.e., org units within ARC).  
> 
> I agree with these two points.
> But for 2) I was expecting something related to the OSI-DS-37 idea.
> What about the "nodes" mentioned there? Are we going to have finally
> two places for registering machines (one under the OU level 
> and the other under the network level)? Don't you think that all kinds 
> of information about a machine must be gathered in one place? 
> 
> Although the more "natural" name for a machine under my organizational 
> unit is e.g. host, csi, forth, gr  I would expect a seperate subtree for 
> the machines within an organization. Although I could have 1,000 people 
> entries mixed with 1,000 machine entries under the same organizational 
> unit subtree a more efficient design is needed (that is going to be
> transparent to the user, of course).
> 
> I think that a "network" subtree under the organizationalUnit level 
> could be used for registering network elements. This provides also
> a uniform view for a machine (= a part of the local network).  
> With a search operation under the "network" subtree a DUA could find
> information about a machine under the OU=ICS,O=FORTH,C=GR when the
> given friendly name is host, ics, forth, gr.
> 
> I am looking forward to seeing opinions on the above.
> 
> Regards,
> Costas. 

We have been investigating the use of X.500 in the Network, Systems and
Applications management frameworks for the last couple of years.

For those who are not aware yet, I would like to refer to our paper that was
presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Integrated Network Management,
San Fransisco, CA, April 1993, pp. 149-160, which discusses our experience of
using the X.500 Directory Service in the network management framework.

I can make the paper available on our ftp server if people are interested.
Let me know please.

Cheers!

James W. Hong                              	     
Research Associate / Adjunct Professor
Dept. of Computer Science      	             	[e-mail]
Middlesex College	
Univ. of Western Ontario			Tel: [phone] x6906	
London, Ontario, N6A-5B7 CANADA    		Fax: [phone]