NetIQ Common Agent Protocol Roger Huebner Internet-Draft NetIQ Corp. Expires: August 16, 2004 February 16, 2004 The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol draft-huebner-ncap-prot-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 16, 2004. Abstract This document outlines the protocol used by the NetIQ Common Agent as part of its NetIQ Common Agent Protocol (NCAP). This binary protocol is used over standard TCP sockets and provides both real-time event delivery and common RPC services to the NetIQ Common Agent Framework. These messages may be encrypted via SSL based on the handshake received during intial negotiation. Messages consist primarily of a standardized header and a variable-length body. Both message header and content are stored in sender-native form, pursuant to a reader-makes-right data flow. NCAP Expires August 16, 2004 [Page 1] Internet-Draft The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol February 2004 I. Introduction The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol (NCAP) describes the format and order of messages used in communication between the client and server components in a NetIQ Common n-tiered system. Based on the results of handshaking, these messages may be sent in "clear text" mode (unencrypted) or encrypted via SSL. Once a session has established a standard mode of transport encryption, it stays constant for the lifetime of the session. Once connection has been made and handshake mode successfully completed, authentication may or may not take place, based on user configuration and environmental requirements. Established connections may then send and receive RPC requests/ responses. Asynchronous system update messages and live event data may also be delivered to the client based on notification subscriptions. II. State Description and Transitions Every connection will exist in one of the following states: a) "UNINITIALIZED" (client only) - in this state, the client has created a connection object, yet has not performed any operations to initiate a server conversation. Transitions to "HANDSHAKING" b) "HANDSHAKING" - in this state, the connection object is negotiating session information, such as peer-endianness, transport encryption/authentication required, etc. Transitions to "CONNECTED" or "INVALIDATED". c) "CONNECTED" - in this state, a valid session exists that has satisfied both peers and wherein normal VIS-level requests and responses may take place. d) "INVALIDATED" - in this state, either the local or remote peer has decided that this connection no longer may be used due to the failure to negotiate a mutually-agreed upon standard, the failure to establish trustworthiness of the peer, or the client could not provide adequate credentials. NCAP Expires August 16, 2004 [Page 2] Internet-Draft The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol February 2004 III. Message Overview Messages are structured collections of data with a well-defined grammar used to communicate such concepts as: authentication, provider requests, provider responses and event notifications. Certain messages only occur under specific circumstances. For example, SSL negotiations will only happen during the "HANDSHAKING" phase; NCAP messages may happen in either "HANDSHAKING" or "CONNECTED" modes. IV. NCAP Messages Messages used by the VIS Protocol are of the following generic format. [header] [message-specific payload] The header contains information such as the endian of the message, information regarding which process/thread sent the message, request order ID, message category and type, etc. The endian of the message will be the same as that of the sender. Fields will be converted to the local endian by the receiving process ("reader-makes-right"). The endian specifier in the header is a single byte and obviously unaffected by this. The payload immediately follows the header and contains flattened data specific to the type of request or reply specified in the header. This data is flattened via the standard VIS flattening/ unflattening methods. The payload, as with the header, is flattened in the sender's endian. VIS takes the endian issues into account when unflattening this data. NCAP Expires August 16, 2004 [Page 3] Internet-Draft The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol February 2004 Author's Address Roger Huebner NetIQ Corp. Park Towers North 1233 West Loop South, Ste 1800 Houston, TX 77027 USA Phone: (713) 418-5407 EMail: Roger.Huebner@netiq.com Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. Information on the IETF's procedures with respect to rights in standards-track and standards-related documentation can be found in BCP-11. 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