Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AHWAHNEE.STANFORD.EDU!dcrocker
From: dcrocker@AHWAHNEE.STANFORD.EDU (Dave Crocker)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  DoD --> CMOT and SNMP
Message-ID: <8909021142.AA08148@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 2 Sep 89 04:40:26 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
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(Sorry.  I intended to send this to the entire list. DHC)

	From dcrocker Fri Sep  1 21:28:53 1989
	From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker>
	Subject: Re:  DoD --> CMOT and SNMP
	To: mcsun!cernvax!cgch!wasc@uunet.uu.net
	
	The Internet Activities Board has declared SNMP and CMOT to be co-equal
	standards.  If effect, this means that they both have a stamp of approval
	from a significant "standards" body.  (For the TCP/IP technology, the
	IAB fills the kind of role that ISO and CCITT and ECMA do in various
	parts of international communities.
	
	So much for the stamp of approval.
	
	Your question is more to the point and asks about actual support by
	vendors.  (A nicely practical point to have concern for.)
	
	A number of companies are currently shipping products that use SNMP.
	Further, the NSFNet is managed using it.  It is my impression that virtually
	all TCP/IP vendors have announced intent to support SNMP, if they are not
	already doing so.
	
	SNMP is unique to the TCP/IP community, although it uses the OSI ASN.1
	encoding standard, for specifying the format of objects.  CMOT is derived
	from the OSI CMOT standards effort, although I am told there are some
	differences.  It is not clear to me that these differences are in the
	management protocol, itself, it does run over a modified stack of
	support protocols.  Most significantly, is uses TCP or, perhaps, UDP,
	instead of an OSI transport.  Hence, CMOT gets you closer to the future
	of OSI network management protocol details.
	
	However, there does not appear to be any vendor that currently ships
	CMOT and, therefore, there is no field (production network) experience
	using it.  While a number of vendors have announced plans to support
	CMOT, I am not aware of any official, announced, delivery dates from
	these vendors.
	
	A further point about the recent decision to make SNMP and CMOT co-equal
	standards is that their use of the Management Information Base (MIB) was
	entirely de-coupled.  While one should expect them to continue to use the
	original 100 variable, there having additional variable in common is
	problematic.  At the least, such sharing should be expected to organic or
	accidental, rather than formally enforced.  (That should be "expected to
	be organic..."  I am on a thin wire with a poor editor.)
	
	As always, I trust that others will elaborate on, as well as correct,
	the above.  Dive in!
	
	Dave Crocker
	Digital Equipment Corp.
	

P.S.  On review, I note that I did not respond to your query about 
federal requirements for CMOT support:  There is strong governmental
pressure for moving to OSI.  This is embodied in the GOSIP document.
In general, however, the requirements are careful to allow use of
alternatives.  Perhaps the most extreme way of viewing this is that a
vendor certainly cannot consider ignoring the OSI CMOT.  I am less clear
about their ability to dodge CMOT (but am sure that someone out there in
tcp-land will chime in to clarify, please?)  Enough vendors have stated
intent to support CMOT and enough are working on it, that I would expect it
to start showing up in the future.

P.P.S.  I should use this opportunity to suggest a personal bias.  It is NOT
about which protocol I prefer.  In fact, the brouhaha has, in my opinion,
distracted us from worrying about how to manage multi-administration
inter-networks.  The chosen protocol is not irrelevant to this, but my
suspicion is that we could start with a hopelessly incomplete one and 
still not know how to use it to its fullest.

That is, our general understanding and pursuit of specifying and
developing management (application) SERVICES has been quite limited
and that we would do well to focus on MIB enhancement and specification
of standard applications for management.  (I.e., focus on the bottom
and top of the management architecture.)

D/