Subject: Re: <draft-ietf-disman-remops-mib-03.txt>

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 11:05:49 -0500 (EST)

Hello,

I have quietly followed the recent remops MIB discussions.  Having
been a network analyst in a previous job, I noticed omissions from
the remops ping MIB that I believe would enhance its usefulness.  I 
was wondering if the omissions were intentional and the rationale 
for the omissions. 

Specifically, it seems impossible to configure the current ping MIB to
periodically ping specified IP addresses and report when the ping fails.
As written in  draft-ietf-disman-remops-mib-03.txt,  even using the
scheduling MIB, it appears impossible to use the ping MIB to provide
this capability.  This is true because the ping MIB neither supports 
notifications nor saving the configuration in non-volatile storage.

Although as drafted the ping MIB certainly has value in assisting with
network analysis after network problems occur and have been reported
by network users, the ping MIB seems to be unable to proactively monitor 
IP hosts and alert the network operations staff when IP "connectivity"
is lost.  From past experience as a network analyst, and requests I've
received from my customers, I believe this proactive monitoring 
capability would fill a real need in network analysts' toolchests.
Omitting the proactive-monitoring capability from a standards-track
MIB seems very unfortunate because individual vendors would still
solve the problem, but with non-standard, proprietary MIBs.

Am I overlooking something, is this functionality outside of the scope
of the remops purpose, are there other standard/proprietary/copyrighted/
patented MIBs to provide this capability, or is there some other reason
for this omission?

Regards,
--Alan
 
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Alan Luchuk       SNMP Research, Inc.                 Voice:  +1 423 573 1434
 Software Engineer 3001 Kimberlin Heights Road         FAX:    +1 423 573 9197
 [email-masked]   Knoxville, TN  37920-9716  U.S.A.   http://www.int.snmp.com/
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Karl Auerbach <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 06:33:20 +0000 ( )

> periodically ping specified IP addresses and report when the ping fails.

I get the impression that you are thinking of launching a recurring,
periodic ping to watch for disconnects.

If you do, please do it very carefully -- I have this mental image of
hundreds, thousands, millions of such devices all pinging all over the
network and wasting bandwith, burning router cycles, and clogging exchange
points with ICMP echo messages.

In general one should try to avoid testing for problem unless there is
some other indication that such a test is needed.

You might want to run you tests only at such times as other traffic is not
flowing and which would otherwise notice the network noise or
disconnection.

(In other words, don't depend exclusively on SNMP or pings to notice when
the net is broken.)

Yes, that's outside the mib, but there are simply things that are too
complext to easily express in a mib.  That's what we have programming
languages for. ;-)

		--karl--