CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Bernhard Stockman/EBONE
Minutes of the Operational Statistics Working Group (OPSTAT)
Agenda
o RFC1404 Deployment Experience
o Client/Server Protocol: Presentation by ANS
o Statistical MIB
RFC1404 Deployment Experience
Daniel Karrenberg reported that the efforts to convert MONSTER to use
RFC1404 have not progressed. Due to resource constraints further
development of MONSTER has been put on indefinite hold. What would be
needed to make it use RFC1404 is just a relatively simple reformatter.
Further it could need a rewrite of the actual SNMP polling function
since this uses the snmp capable awk from ISODE which is very hard to
install. Daniel renewed his offer to get started, those people who are
interested in continuing work on Monster.
Craig Haney who was not present at the Working Group meeting has a PERL
parser for the RFC1404 format.
A list of problems were reported with RFC1404:
o In the syntax for device-fields multiple tag-tables are not
delimited syntactically. Proposed solutions:
- Count preceding
- Different field separator withing tag-table
- Bracketing tag-table with something BEGIN-TAGT, END-TAGT
- Bracketing with
The Group decided to use s around tag-table. This will lead to a
revision of the BNF:
device-section ::= "BEGIN_DEVICE" <FS>
<device-field> <FS>
"END_DEVICE"
device-field ::= <networkname><FS><routername><FS><linkname><FS>
<bw-value><FS><bw-sort><FS><proto-type><FS>
<proto-addr><FS><time-zone><FS> "{" <tag-table> "}"
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[ "{" <tag-table> "}" ]
Action: Bernhard volunteered to check for similar problems and report
via mail.
After the discussion the Group decided to collect more problem reports
from implementors before trying to issue another RFC.
There IS interest in USING tools following the RFC out there. There is
not much interest in actually producing the tools. FARNET (who?) might
produce some funding for developing PD tools. Question: Who would be
interested? No immediate interest.
Action: Bernhard will send a message to the list about this and try to
find capable implementors. Anyone interested persons should contact
Bernhard.
Client/Server Protocol
The intention is to make (aggregated) statistical information available
from a server. A strawman document is being developed. The following
reports were given:
o Henry Clark reported on implementation experience. Login is
primitive direct string comparison. Separate configuration file
defining the view of the users. Server runs use psi formant but
don't use opstat.
o Ittai Herhman reported on a similar system currently being used at
ANS which originated at Merit. Refer to slides.
o Vikas Aggarwal also showed some examples of reports. Both Vikas
and Ittai remarked that from limited experiments they have done it
seems that for line utilisation there is little difference between
15 minute and 1 minute sampling. A preliminary document is being
done.
The Group went into architectural brainstorm mode and reached the
following conclusions:
o There is agreement to generalise the authorisation passed by login
to generic authentication strings and leave in the authentication
method used as a local matter beyond the scope.
o Select shouldn't return the data, there should be a separate "get"
command to initiate that, multiple selections are possible and
identified by a selection ID which can be specified by client and
will be returned by server.
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o Status command to find out status of what is currently selected
especially the amount of data.
Action: Bernhard Stockman will change the strawman accordingly.
Statistical MIB
Consensus is that a short list of HIGLY DESIRABLE variables should be
agreed upon and forwarded to the ?? WG for inclusion in the next
Internet Standard MIB.
Action: Bernhard will forward a list of all so far proposed variables
to the list and re-start discussion.
Attendees
Vikas Aggarwal aggarwal@jvnc.net
David Bolen db3l@ans.net
Erik-Jan Bos erik-jan.bos@surfnet.nl
Rebecca Bostwick bostwick@es.net
Douglas Carson carson@utcc.utoronto.ca
James Cassell jcassell@dsac.dla.mil
Henry Clark henryc@oar.net
David Conrad davidc@iij.ad.jp
Roger Fajman raf@cu.nih.gov
Stefan Fassbender stf@easi.net
Dale Finkelson dmf@westie.mid.net
Eric Fleischman ericf@act.boeing.com
Paul Franchois paulf@bldrdoc.gov
Kenneth Goodwin goodwin@a.psc.edu
Ittai Hershman ittai@ans.net
Daniel Karrenberg daniel@ripe.net
Kim Long klong@sura.net
David Lovering lovering@bldrdoc.gov
Daniel McRobb dwm@noc.ans.net
Greg Minshall minshall@wc.novell.com
Bob Morgan morgan@networking.stanford.edu
Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu
Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil
Steven Richardson sjr@merit.edu
Vilson Sarto vilson@fapq.fapesp.br
Richard Woundy rwoundy@vnet.ibm.com
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