SNMP Agent Extensibility (agentx)

This Working Group did not meet

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 51st IETF Meeting in London, England. It may now be out-of-date. Last Modified: 31-Jul-01

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:

Done		Publication of AgentX protocol specification as Proposed
Done		Publication of AgentX MIB specification as a Proposed Standard
Done		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
Aug 01		Shutdown WG or re-charter

No Current Internet-Drafts

Request For Comments:

RFC	Status	Title
RFC2741	PS	Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol
RFC2742	PS	Definitions of Managed Objects for Extensible SNMP Agents