Subject: WG Review: Evolution of SNMP (eos)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:22:15 -0500

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Operations and Management
Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet. 

The following Description was submitted, and is provided for
informational purposes only:

Evolution of SNMP (eos)
-------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

Description of Working Group:
 
A small number of changes added to the SNMP protocol would provide a
substantial improvement to the protocol in terms of utility and 
efficiency. The changes must fall within the existing SNMP architecture 
as defined in RFC 2571. The intent of the working group is to focus on 
changes that may be easily defined and implemented which should then 
promote rapid acceptance and deployment. New protocol operations are 
within the realm of acceptable changes that may be defined.

The initial work items include:

- A standards-track document defining the mechanism by which the
  capabilities of a SNMP entity may be determined. This document should
  also define the interoperability requirements of the SNMP protocol
  when extensions are present and when they are absent;

- A standards-track document defining a mechanism for efficient 
  retrieval, creation, and deletion of rows in tables;

- A standards-track document defining a mechanism used to delete an 
  entire subtree of managed object instances. This could, for example, 
  be used to remove all information related to a particular username in 
  the SNMP administrative framework;

- A standards-track document defining a mechanism to provide for 
  compression of object identifiers to remove as much redundant 
  information as possible in the payload of the SNMP message; and,

- A standards-track document defining a mechanism for bulk transfer of 
  SNMP data.

Some of the documents may be combined if the working group so decides.

No additional work items may be taken on by the working group until this
initial set of work is close to completion. Additional work will have to 
be approved by the IESG and the IAB.