SNMP Agent Extensibility (agentx)

In addition to this official charter maintained by the IETF Secretariat, there is additional information about this working group on the Web at:

Last Modified: 12/04/2001

Chair(s):

Bob Natale <bnatale@lucent.com>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):

Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
Bert Wijnen <bwijnen@lucent.com>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:

Bert Wijnen <bwijnen@lucent.com>

Editor(s):

Mark Ellison <ellison@world.std.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion:agentx@dorothy.bmc.com
To Subscribe: agentx-request@dorothy.bmc.com
In Body: Subscribe. MUST include Subject: subscribe
Archive: ftp://amethyst.bmc.com/pub/agentx/archives

Description of Working Group:

The goal of this working group is to define standards-track technology for SNMP Agent extensibility. The resulting technology specification will allow independently developed sub-agents to communicate with a master-agent running on an Internet device.

The technology specification will consist of:

o (mandatory) a platform-independent protocol which supports intra-agent communication within a device or local area network;

o (optional) a MIB module, which, when implemented by a master-agent, allows an SNMP-based management application to monitor and control the intra-agent communication service; and,

o (optional) a programmatic interface to the services offered by that protocol.

The working group is explicitly directed to develop a solution which is adequate to achieve transparency with respect to whether a SNMP request is processed by a master-agent and/or one or more sub-agents; simultaneously, the working group is further directed to use good engineering judgement is developing an approach with the smallest reasonable "footprint" to achieve intra-agent communication. As a consequence, if the working group may choose to avoid complete transparency, if, at its discretion, this proves too costly. In this case, the working group should document its decision for this engineering trade-off.

Although the working group will solicit existing specifications and experience in this area, it will produce a vendor-neutral technology specification.

Goals and Milestones:

NOV 00    Publication of AgentX protocol specification as Proposed
NOV 00    Publication of AgentX MIB specification as a Proposed Standard
APR 01    Implementation reports formally solicited
APR 01    Interoperability reports formally solicited
MAY 01    Implementation and interoperability reports summarized (by WG Chair) and assessed via WG e-mail discussion
JUN 01    All open issues resolved
JUL 01    Modifications (if any) to documents (RFC2741 and RFC2742) completed
JUL 01    Decision to advance or recycle made by WG and handed off to IESGfor action
NOV 01    Request for advancement of RFC 2741 and 2742 made to IESG
JAN 02    Shutdown WG or re-charter

No Current Internet-Drafts

Request For Comments:

Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol Version 1 (RFC 2257) (177452 bytes)
Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol (RFC 2741) (199867 bytes)
Definitions of Managed Objects for Extensible SNMP Agents (RFC 2742) (36644 bytes)