2.4.10 Remote Network Monitoring (rmonmib)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 43rd IETF Meeting in Orlando, Florida. It may now be out-of-date. Last Modified: 25-Nov-98

Chair(s):

Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>

Operations and Management Area Director(s):

Harald Alvestrand <Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no>
Bert Wijnen <wijnen@vnet.ibm.com>

Operations and Management Area Advisor:

Bert Wijnen <wijnen@vnet.ibm.com>

Technical Advisor(s):

Steven Waldbusser <waldbusser@ins.com>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion:rmonmib@cisco.com
To Subscribe: rmonmib-request@cisco.com
Archive: ftpeng.cisco.com/ftp/rmonmib/rmonmib

Description of Working Group:

The RMON MIB Working Group is chartered to define a set of managed objects for remote monitoring of networks. These objects will be the minimum necessary to provide the ability to monitor multiple network layers of traffic in remote networks; providing fault, configuration, and performance management, and will be consistent with the SNMP framework and existing SNMP standards.

The working group will consider existing MIB modules that define objects which support similar management, e.g., RFC 1271 and RFC 1513 and efforts in other areas, e.g., the accounting and operational statistics activities. It is possible that this RMON will not be backwards compatible with existing RMON RFCs, but the reasons for any such incompatibility will be well documented.

The following list of features for this RMON has been previously discussed in relation to existing RMON functionality and is included to focus these RMON activities. It is recognized that other issues may be considered and that certain of the following issues may not be part of the final specification:

1) Additional Protocol Identifier macros will be added to the Protocol Identifiers Specification to broaden protocol decode support in RMON-2.

2) Monitoring support will be improved for high-speed interfaces, for which octet and/or packet counters can possibly wrap in less than one hour. Packet capture support for high speed interfaces will also be considered.

3) RMON probe configuration capability, especially for switch-based RMON implementations, will be improved.

4) Configuration and monitoring of full-duplex ethernet interfaces will be considered and/or clarified.

5) Monitoring instrumentation for IEEE 802.1Q VLAN-based network traffic will be considered.

Goals and Milestones:

Done

  

Activation of working group, call for suggested MIB modules.

Done

  

Submit initial Internet-Drafts for Protocol Identifier and High Capacity RMON functionality.

May 97

  

Submit initial draft for configuration extensions and other functionality.

Aug 97

  

Submit Internet drafts to IESG for standards track action.

Internet-Drafts:

Request For Comments:

RFC

Status

Title

 

RFC1757

DS

Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base

RFC2021

PS

Remote Network Monitoring Management Information Base Version 2 using SMIv2

RFC2074

PS

Remote Network Monitoring MIB Protocol Identifiers

Current Meeting Report

OPS Area
RMONMIB WG Meeting Minutes
43rd IETF
Orlando, FL USA
December 7, 1998
Minutes by Andy Bierman

Review Material

(A) draft-ietf-rmonmib-rmonprot-v2-03.txt
(A1) draft-ietf-rmonmib-rmonprot-ref-00.txt
(A2) draft-ietf-rmonmib-rmonprot-mac-00.txt
(B) draft-ietf-rmonmib-smon-04.txt
(C) draft-ietf-rmonmib-hcrmon-03.txt
(D) draft-warth-rmon2-artmib-00.txt
(E) draft-bierman-dsmon-mib-00.txt

Agenda

1) Discuss any WG Last Call open issues with I-Ds (A) - (C).
2) Discuss any implementation experience comments for RFC 1513 and RFC 1757.
3) Discuss proposal for new WG charter.
4) Short presentations of feature proposal I-Ds.
- 10 minutes for I-D (D)
- 10 minutes for I-D (E)
5) Short presentations of new charter feature proposals.
- limited to 10 minutes each
- contact the Chair to reserve 1 of N limited timeslots
6) Discuss functional requirements for most popular of the new feature proposals.

Minutes

1) Comments on all Current Work Item I-Ds

Several documents have been through a last review cycle. Open issues were discussed, one document at a time.

1.1) SMON MIB

Some minor issues with I-D (B) were discussed and resolved at the meeting:
- smonDataSource: VLAN ID restrictions are mentioned in introductory text; this text will be added to the TC definition itself.
- smonCapabilities: The BIT numbering is not dense, i.e., BIT 3 is skipped. The WG decided not to change this object at this late date. BIT 3 will remain unused.
- smonVlanStatsId sub-range: The VLAN-ID sub-range needs to be clarified to be consistent with the latest Bridge MIB (draft-ietf-bridge-bridgemib-03.txt). The local VLAN-IDs (above 4095) are not properly supported.
- smonMIBCompliances numbering collision: The Object Identifier assignments { rmonConformance 3 } and { rmonConformance 4 } were both used by the HC-RMON MIB (C) and the SMON MIB. The HC-RMON MIB will renumber to fix the problem.

The updated document has already been published as <draft-ietf-rmonmib-smon-05.txt> and a WG Last Call has been started for this document. It will soon be forwarded to the Area Director for publication as
a Proposed Standard RFC.

1.2) RMON Protocol Identifier documents

There were no comments on I-Ds (A1) and (A2). I-D (A) is now obsolete. These drafts (A1 and A2) have been forwarded to the Area Director for publication.

The PI Reference document (A1) is intended to remain on the standards track at Proposed Draft status, and the PI Macros document will be removed from the standards track and published as an Informational RFC.

1.3) HC-RMON MIB

There were no comments on this I-D (C), other than the OID numbering collision with the SMON MIB.

The HC-RMON MIB will be republished with correct OID assignments. This minor modification does not warrant a WG Last Call review period, so the new documented will be forwarded directly to the Area Director for publication as a Proposed Standard RFC.

2) RFC 1513 and RFC 1757 Implementation Experience

The WG Chair is compiling an implementation report to support standards advancement of the Token Ring RMON MIB and (Ethernet) RMON MIB. Several vendors have responded and it appears all objects in both MIBs have been implemented (in an interoperable way) by several vendors.

Both documents will be reissued in SMIv2 format. No other changes will be made, with the exception of minor clarifications of known problems.

The updated documents will go through a 2 week WG Last Call when they are published. After any and all issues are resolved, the documents and the Implementation Reports will be forwarded to the Area Directors for publication. The RFC 1513 update I-D should be published as a Draft Standard RFC and the RFC 1757 update I-D should be published as a (Full) Internet Standard RFC.

3) Discussion of new WG Charter Proposal

The WG has been surveying members for new feature proposals for several months, and at the last IETF meeting, an outline of a charter proposal was drafted. The WG Chair presented an expanded version of that outline, and other new WG items were discussed as well.

3.1) Network Service Level Monitoring

The WG discussed this feature in some detail, and Russell Dietz presented some measurement issues and some suggested solution approaches. This feature is very popular among several vendors of RMON and RMON-like products, and there is strong demand for an RMON-2 based standard in this area.

3.2) Persistent Label to Address Mapping

The WG discussed the need for a mapping function between persistent labels (e.g., user login names) and addresses (usually network addresses). This is especially needed in DHCP environments, because the IP address assignments are dynamic.

3.3) Differentiated Services Statistics Collection

The WG discussed a feature proposal (I-D (E)) to support RMON-2 like statistics, with an additional index component for the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) value.

3.4) Protocol Directory Optimizations

The WG discussed the need for a quick lookup mechanism for ProtocolDirTable entries, indexed only by the protocolDirLocalIndex value. The WG also discussed the need for application wildcarding in the protocolDirTable, to reduce the size of the protocol directory, and reduce polling costs for an NMS application.

3.5) Physical Port TopN Table

The WG discussed the need for a simple TopN mechanism for an entire dataSource. This is especially useful for an RMON agent with many possible dataSources (e.g., an embedded switch environment).

3.6) Frame Relay RMON (* not discussed at WG meeting *)

A late feature was discussed on the mailing list just after the RMONMIB WG meeting in Orlando, regarding RMON support for Frame Relay interfaces.

There is a demonstrated need to identify a standard approach to DLCI-to-dataSource mappings, as well as the specification of a standard set of RMON features which should (or may) be supported on Frame Relay interfaces.

There were three emails to the list in strong support of this feature, and no emails opposed to this feature.

3.7) Proposed Schedule for New Work

A proposed schedule was presented by the WG Chair:

1/99: Activation of WG, call for suggested MIB modules.

3/99: Reach agreement on the functional scope of the charter, and the number and nature of all document deliverables.

6/99: Submit initial Internet Drafts for all document deliverables.

9/99: Begin WG Last Call for all drafts in progress.

11/99: Complete WG Last Call for all drafts in progress.

12/99: Submit Internet Drafts to IESG for standards track action.

3.8) Summary

The WG charter text was discussed, and some minor changes were made at the meeting. The updated version will include all work items in this section. It is expected that all current work (i.e., RMON PI Reference, SMON MIB, HC-RMON MIB, Interoperability Reports, and SMIv2 updates) will be forwarded to the Area Director before this new work begins. The updated charter proposal will be released soon, but only to allow the IESG time to review it. It is hoped that this new work can begin in February.

4) Feature Proposal Presentations

4.1) ART MIB

This presentation was made at the 'New SNMP Work' BOF instead of this meeting. There was no discussion of I-D (D).

4.2) DS-MON MIB I-D

The WG Chair presented a solution proposal for the new DIFFSERV statistics work item (I-D (E)). There was some interest in pursuing this design further. The WG will discuss this I-D on the mailing list after the new charter is finalized.

5) Feature Presentation Proposals

Russell Dietz of Technically Elite presented a MIB for monitoring service level metrics such as response time and availability. This MIB will be presented to the WG as an I-D in the near future. [Ed. - detailed notes of this presentation were not received by the publication deadline.]

There was a great deal of interest in this type of approach, especially the notion that response time is not the only metric which must be measured. The WG also feels strongly that the RMON-2 type of protocol, host, and host-address-pair classification is essential to provide a powerful service level monitoring function. The RMON-2 protocolDirectory can be used to identify protocols associated with network services, and some existing RMON-2 groups can be extended to support this new feature.

The WG will discuss this feature in depth on the mailing list.

6) Functional Requirements of Popular Feature Proposals

There was no time left at the end of the meeting for this agenda item, but there was a great deal of Q&A discussion during each presentation. Functional requirements of all features will be discussed on the mailing list, if and when the new charter is approved by the IESG.

Slides

User Service Performance Metrics