Subject: [Call-home] last call for a Call Home BoF

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:12:57 +0200

After all of the mail last month, Bert is considering allowing a BoF on 
the topic of Call Home.  I initially posted a note to the call-home 
mailing list announcing the possibility of a BoF.  Response to that note 
was - well - underwhelming.  If you are interested in seeing one, could 
you please reply to this email, CCing the call-home mailing list.  Here 
is a draft agenda.  It is subject to your input.

If we do not see much input, I'm going to drop the request to Bert.

Eliot

Title: callhome
Period of time: 1 hour
Area: ops-nm
Expected # attendees: 40-60 (small room)
Don't conflict with: ISMS, ops-area, netconf (if there is one)

Short Description: Discussion of Architectural Issues Concerning
            protocols that could benefit from reversing
            of roles

Long Description:

Certain protocols, and in particular management protocols where
devices on either end of connection take client server roles may
be able to take advantage of "Call Home" functionality, when
traditional roles are reversed, and a server connect to a client.
Examples of existing protocols that make use of call home include
SMTP [ETRN] and COPS.  At this BoF we will look at extending such
functionality into other protocols, as well as any architectural
issues this raises.

This work stems from efforts in ISMS to extend SNMP to run over SSH,
as well as work as work that has gone on in NETCONF.

We will begin with a discussion of 
draft-lear-callhome-description-0[1,2].txt, which contains a description 
of call home, what problems it can solve, and what some of the 
architectural issues are.  During the BoF we may identify additional 
such issues as well as protocols other than management protocols that 
could benefit from this work.  An additional potential question should 
be whether a generic standard or process should be used to implement 
call home, such as rules for SSH.

There are three possible outcomes: a working group to add "call home"
functionality to existing protocols such as SNMP/SSH and NETCONF/SSH,
use of existing working groups for this purpose, or nothing.

Chair: Eliot Lear (or tbd)
Agenda:

Agenda bashing - 1 minute
Presentation of draft-lear-callhome-description-00.txt 19 minutes
Application to SNMP and open areas - 10 minutes
Discussion including architectural issues - 20 minutes
Moving Forward Options  - 10 minutes

_______________________________________________
Call-home mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/call-home

---

From: Pekka Nikander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:53:05 +0200

Eliot,

I think it is important to discuss this problem space, as there are a  
number of completely different approaches already being developed,  
including STUN/ICE/whatever and IPsec with NAT-T.  Whether the  
proposed approach is a good addition to the set is something that  
could clearly be discussed in a BOF.

--Pekka NIkander

On Oct 12, 2005, at 10:12, Eliot Lear wrote:

> After all of the mail last month, Bert is considering allowing a  
> BoF on the topic of Call Home.  I initially posted a note to the  
> call-home mailing list announcing the possibility of a BoF.   
> Response to that note was - well - underwhelming.  If you are  
> interested in seeing one, could you please reply to this email,  
> CCing the call-home mailing list.  Here is a draft agenda.  It is  
> subject to your input.
>
> We will begin with a discussion of draft-lear-callhome-description-0 
> [1,2].txt, which contains a description of call home, what problems  
> it can solve, and what some of the architectural issues are.   
> During the BoF we may identify additional such issues as well as  
> protocols other than management protocols that could benefit from  
> this work.  An additional potential question should be whether a  
> generic standard or process should be used to implement call home,  
> such as rules for SSH.
>

---

From: Wyllys Ingersoll <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 12:29:00 -0400

> is a draft agenda.  It is subject to your input.

I would attend this BoF.

-Will Ingersoll
  Sun Microsystems

---

From: Josh Littlefield <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:49:11 -0400

I'm interested in this BoF, and think this is an important topic.

Josh Littlefield

-- 
=====================================================================
Josh Littlefield                                  Cisco Systems, Inc.
[email-masked]                             1414 Massachusetts Avenue
tel: 978-936-1379  fax: 978-936-2226       Boxborough, MA  01719-2205

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:59:48 -0700

Eliot Lear wrote:

> After all of the mail last month, Bert is considering allowing a BoF 
> on the topic of Call Home.  I initially posted a note to the call-home 
> mailing list announcing the possibility of a BoF.  Response to that 
> note was - well - underwhelming.  If you are interested in seeing one, 
> could you please reply to this email, CCing the call-home mailing 
> list.  Here is a draft agenda.  It is subject to your input.
>

IMO there is a disconnect between the BoF charter text below and the
email discussions I (mostly) followed in the last month. 
I am in favor of sharply defined work that will achieve integration
between NETCONF and ISMS through foresight and planning.  I'm
not so keen about the open-ended charter text below.

[IMO, this feature is simply defined as "the NETCONF peer
acting in the agent role initiates the session establishment".
There may be additional ISMS requirements, but I don't know.]

I suspected (back at the first NETCONF interim in Sunnyvale)
that our decision to provide this "reverse connect" feature
for BEEP only would come back to bite us -- then even more
when we picked SSH as the mandatory transport.   I think this
functionality is important enough to be available via the
mandatory transport.  (IMO the work can be done as an extension
to the 1.0 specification set.)

Beyond the firewall/NAT issues, I think there are some
important use cases for this feature, especially when
notification generator applications are introduced in NETCONF.
Issues such as mobility, scale, and auto-configuration may
make applications a lot easier to design if the agent
connects to the manager.

> Eliot

Andy

> draft-lear-callhome-description-0[1,2].txt, which contains a 
> description of call home, what problems it can solve, and what some of 
> the architectural issues are.  During the BoF we may identify 
> additional such issues as well as protocols other than management 
> protocols that could benefit from this work.  An additional potential 
> question should be whether a generic standard or process should be 
> used to implement call home, such as rules for SSH.
>