INTERNET-DRAFT Expires November 1996 INTERNET-DRAFT Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 The DELEGATION-POINT Construct for SNMP MIB Modules May 27, 1996 David T. Perkins dperkins@scruznet.com 1. Status of this Memo This document is an Internet Draft. 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. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working draft" or "work in progress." To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the internet-drafts Shadow Directories on: ftp.is.co.za (Africa) nic.nordu.net (Europe) ds.internic.net (US East Coast) ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast) munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim) Expires 11/27/96 [Page 1] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 2. Introduction This memo defines an experimental construct to be used with managing the assignments of object identifiers (OIDs). Assignments are made by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), by IETF working groups, and by enterprises. OIDs are primarily used in defining items in specifications called Management Information Bases (MIBs) for use with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The format of MIB specifications is defined in a collection of documents called the SMI. Version 1 is defined by[1][2] and version 2 is defined by[3][4][5]. This memo specifies a parsable construct that can be used to explicitly document the delegation of authority for OID assignments. This construct can be easily converted to compatible constructs for the SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 SMIs. This memo specifies a parsable construct, called DELEGATION-POINT, and proposes that it be added to a future version of the SNMPv2 SMI. The construct is an ASN.1 macro to explicitly document OID delegation. This construct is easily translatable to existing constructs in the SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 SMIs. However, the result from translation is an ASN.1 comments and thus is not in an unambiguous parsable format. This memo does not specify a standard for the Internet community. 3. Background Management of the OID assignments used in defining items in SNMP MIB modules is a key task that has high risk and high penalty for mistakes. This risk is because once a valid assignment has been made, it cannot be changed and it lasts for eternity. OIDs are structured in a hierarchical tree. The owner of a sub-tree has responsibility for assignments and delegation of assignments within that sub-tree. Delegation of assignment is the act of giving ownership of a sub-tree within a sub-tree to another. The language for SNMP MIB modules contains parsable constructs for specifying assignments of OIDs, but does not contain a parsable construct for specifying delegation of ownership. Without such a construct, it may not be clear who has the authority for assignments in a specific sub-tree. Without such a construct, there is no audit trail to verify that a claimed assignment was actually made or that it was done by the owner or person authorized by the owner. Currently, delegations are documented through ad hoc communication mechanisms and procedures. Expires 11/27/96 [Page 2] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 DELEGATION-POINT MACRO ::= BEGIN -- A macro to document a delegation of an OID sub-tree. -- The item defined by usage of this macro is assigned -- an OID value. This is NOT a registration. It is just an -- OID value assignment. TYPE NOTATION ::= "ASSIGNED-DATE" value(UTCTime) "ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT" Text "ASSIGNED-TO-ORG" Text "ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT" Text "DESCRIPTION" Text ReferPart VALUE NOTATION ::= value(VALUE OBJECT IDENTIFIER) ReferPart ::= "REFERENCE" Text | empty -- The characters in the "string" below may be any -- printable character in the NVT ASCII character set -- except for a quote, and may include line separators. Text ::= """" string """" END 5. Description of the DELEGATION-POINT Construct The construct is specified as: DELEGATION-POINT ::= where is the ASN.1 identifier of the item being defined, are the clauses of the DELEGATION-POINT construct, and is the OID value of the root of the delegated sub-tree. 5.1. Descriptor The SNMPv2 SMI has restrictions on descriptors, which also apply to the for items defined with the DELEGATION-POINT construct. A descriptor must consist of one or more letters or digits, and its initial character must be a lower-case letter. (Also, the SNMPv2 SMI does not allow hyphens, even though hyphen is allowed by SNMPv1 SMI.) Furthermore, the SNMPv2 SMI requires that for all descriptors appearing in an information module, the descriptor shall be unique and mnemonic, and shall not exceed 64 characters in length. (However, descriptors Expires 11/27/96 [Page 3] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 longer than 32 characters are not recommended.) This requirement promotes a common language for humans to use when discussing the information module and also facilitates simple table mappings for user- interfaces. The set of descriptors defined in all "standard" information modules must be unique. 5.2. Clauses The clauses of the DELEGATION-POINT construct specify the information needed for managing delegation of OID assignments. The ASSIGNED-DATE clause, which must be present, contains the date and time that this delegation was assigned. The date and time are represented in UTC Time format (see Appendix B of [3]). (Note that there is no ASSIGNED-BY-ORG clause, since this must be the same as the organization which is named in the ORGANIZATION clause of the MODULE-IDENTITY construct of the MIB module containing a DELEGATION- POINT construct.) The ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT clause, which must be present, contains the name, postal address, telephone number, and electronic mail address of the person to whom technical queries concerning this assignment should be sent. The ASSIGNED-TO-ORG clause, which must be present, contains a textual name of the organization to receive the OID sub-tree delegation. The ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT clause, which must be present, contains the name, postal address, telephone number, and electronic mail address of the person (or pseudo person such as a position) to whom technical queries concerning this delegation should be sent. The DESCRIPTION clause, which must be present, contains a textual description of this delegation. The REFERENCE clause, which need not be present, contains a textual cross-reference to a document using this delegation. 5.3. OID Value The OID value specifies the sub-tree that is delegated. This value may be registered by another SNMP construct, such as an OBJECT-TYPE, MODULE- IDENTITY, or OBJECT-IDENTITY construct. The organization to receive the delegation owns the registration of the OID value. The OBJECT-IDENTITY construct, in most situations, is the preferred one to register the root of the delegated sub-tree. Expires 11/27/96 [Page 4] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 6. Example Usage The DELEGATION-POINT construct may be used by IANA, IETF WGs, and enterprises (and contained entities within an enterprise) to manage delegation of OID assignments. Below are examples of each type of delegation: -- The following is used to delegate a sub-tree of OID -- values to an IETF working group. mdmMibDel DELEGATION-POINT ASSIGNED-ON "9406120000Z" -- June 12, 1994 (midnight) ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT " Joyce Reynolds Postal: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority USC - Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 Tel: +1 310-822-1511 E-mail: IANA@ISI.EDU" ASSIGNED-TO-ORG "IETF Modem Management Working Group" ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT " Steven Waldbusser, WG Chair Postal: Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Tel: +1 412-268-6628 E-mail: waldbusser@cmu.edu" DESCRIPTION "For use in defining MIB objects for managing modems." REFERENCE "RFC 1696 - Modem Management Information Base (MIB) using SMIv2" ::= { mib 38 } -- Inside of the modem MIB, the following registration using an -- OBJECT-IDENTITY construct is the preferred mechanism to register -- the OID value specified in the delegation. MdmMib OBJECT-IDENTITY STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The OID sub-tree for defining SNMP items for managing modems. This sub-tree delegated to the Modem MIB working group by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)." REFERENCE "ftp://venera.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/ assignments/smi-numbers" ::= { mib 38 } Expires 11/27/96 [Page 5] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 -- The following is used to delegate a sub-tree of OID -- values to an enterprise. entMibs4youDel DELEGATION-POINT ASSIGNED-ON "9406120000Z" -- June 12, 1994 (midnight) ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT " Joyce Reynolds Postal: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority USC - Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 Tel: +1 310-822-1511 E-mail: IANA@ISI.EDU" ASSIGNED-TO-ORG "Mibs4You" ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT " David T. Perkins Postal: 3763 Benton Street Santa Clara, CA 95051 Tel: +1 408-555-1212 E-mail: dperkins@scruznet.com" DESCRIPTION "For use by enterprise Mibs4You." ::= { enterprise 1194 } -- The following might be found in an enterprise MIB module. mibs4youRoot OBJECT-IDENTITY STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The root of the OID sub-tree for Mibs4You." REFERENCE "ftp://venera.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/ assignments/enterprise-numbers" ::= { enterprise 1194 } Expires 11/27/96 [Page 6] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 -- The following is used by a company to subdivide -- their OID sub-tree with an assignment to a division -- within the company. tscPumpDivDel DELEGATION-POINT ASSIGNED-ON "9605060000Z" -- May 6, 1996 (midnight) ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT " Al E. Gator Postal: The SwampLan Company One Lake Front Drive Gotha, FL 32836 Tel: +1 407-555-1212 E-mail: agator@swamplan.org" ASSIGNED-TO-ORG "Pumping Division, The SwampLan Company" ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT " Flo Mingo Postal: Pump It 405 Island Circle, Suite 9 Cathedral City, CA 92234 Tel: +1 619-555-1212 E-mail: fmingo@pumpit.swamplan.org" DESCRIPTION "For use in MIBs developed by the Pumping Division." ::= { tscDivs 2 } -- The following might be found in a MIB module for the -- pumping division. pumpItRoot OBJECT-IDENTITY STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The root of the OID sub-tree for the pumping division of The SwampLan Company." REFERENCE "MIB module TSC-ROOT-MIB from The SwampLan Company." ::= { tscDivs 2 } Expires 11/27/96 [Page 7] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 -- The following is used by an IETF WG to sub-divide -- their OID sub-tree assignment. dot1dSrDel DELEGATION-POINT ASSIGNED-ON "9605060000Z" -- May 6, 1996 (midnight) ASSIGNED-BY-CONTACT " Fred Baker, Bridge MIB WG Chair Postal: Cisco Systems 518 Lado Drive Santa Barbara, CA 93111 Tel: +1 805-681-0115 E-mail: fred@cisco.com" ASSIGNED-TO-ORG "Source Routing Bridge MIB WG" ASSIGNED-TO-CONTACT " Anil Rijsinghani, WG Editor Postal: Digital Equipment Corporation 550 King Street Littleton, MA 01460 Tel: +1 508-486-6786 E-mail: anil@levers.enet.dec.com" DESCRIPTION "For use in MIBs to manage source routing bridges." REFERENCE "RFC 1525 - Definitions of Managed Objects for Source Routing Bridges" ::= { dot1dBridge 3 } -- The following might be found in the source route -- MIB module. dot1dSr OBJECT-IDENTITY STATUS current DESCRIPTION "The OID sub-tree for defining SNMP items for managing source routing bridges. This sub-tree delegated to the Source Routing Bridge MIB working group by the Bridge MIB working group." REFERENCE "RFC 1493 - Definitions of Managed Objects for Bridges" ::= { dot1dBridge 3 } 7. Acknowledgments Thanks go to Joyce Reynolds for her review. Expires 11/27/96 [Page 8] Draft DELEGATION-POINT Construct May 27, 1996 8. References [1] K. McCloghrie, M. Rose, "Structure and Identification of Managemen Information for TCP/IP-based Internets", RFC 1155, 05/10/1990. [2] K. McCloghrie, M. Rose, "Concise MIB Definitions", RFC 1212, 03/26/1991. [3] J. Case, K. McCloghrie, M. Rose, S. Waldbusser, "Structure of Management Information for Version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1902, 01/22/1996. [4] J. Case, K. McCloghrie, M. Rose, S. Waldbusser, "Textual Conventions for Version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1903, 01/22/1996. [5] J. Case, K. McCloghrie, M. Rose, S. Waldbusser, "Conformance Statements for Version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1904, 01/22/1996. Management Information for version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)", RFC 1442, 05/03/1993. Expires 11/27/96 [Page 9]