Re: [IETFMIBS] Message Encoding for SNMPv3

["Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>]

Hi -

> From: "Hamid Mukhtar" <hamid at etri.re.kr>
> To: "Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>
> Cc: <ietfmibs at ietf.org>
> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 11:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [IETFMIBS] Message Encoding for SNMPv3
>
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Randy Presuhn
> <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Hi -
> >
> >> From: "Hamid Mukhtar" <hamid at etri.re.kr>
> >> To: "Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>
> >> Cc: <ietfmibs at ietf.org>
> >> Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 5:08 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [IETFMIBS] Message Encoding for SNMPv3
> > ...
> >> Just for my knowledge, Is the use of proxy-forwarder applications
> >> restricted to forwarding the four basic types only or they can be used
> >> for other proxy related applications too.
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "the four basic types".
> >
> 
> RFC 3413 in its section 3.5 identifies four basic types of proxy
> forwarder applications.

No, it does not.  Section 3.5 describes the handling of four message
types to be handled by a proxy application.

>  You specified that the proxy forwarder (as
> defined in RFC 3413) uses a "narrow sense" of the term proxy.  For my
> understanding I just need to clarify what you mean by narrow sense. Do
> you mean that the only translation a proxy forwarder can do as an
> intermediate entity is between SNMP versions. Thus the SNMPv3 proxy
> forwarders cannot be used to translate between SNMP and non-SNMP
> protocols (for instance a protocol which uses XML instead of BER
> encoding).

See RFC 3413 section 1.5.  This paragraph sums it up:

   To avoid such confusion, this document uses the term "proxy" with a
   much more tightly defined meaning.  The term "proxy" is used in this
   document to refer to a proxy forwarder application which forwards
   either SNMP messages without regard for what managed objects are
   contained within those messages.  This definition is most closely
   related to the first definition above.  Note, however, that in the
   SNMP architecture [RFC3411], a proxy forwarder is actually an
   application, and need not be associated with what is traditionally
   thought of as an SNMP agent.

Randy