CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Jeff Hilgeman/Apertus Technologies Minutes of the SNA DLC Services MIB Working Group (SNADLC) The SNADLC Working Group met at the 28th IETF to continue working on the SDLC MIB. There were twelve people in attendance. The majority of the time was spent going through the MIB objects and further clarifying their type, range, description, etc. Much of the effort during this working session was in the area of consistency check. There will be a follow up posting to snadlcmib detailing the changes in the MIB. SDLC MIB The group has focused exclusively on SDLC for the present time. Other DLCs that were dropped at the formation of the working group were discussed (e.g., QLLC and channel). The group had originally determined that it would not make the December 1993 due date for delivery of the SDLC MIB and that it would shoot for early 1994. This was unacceptable to the Network Management Area Director, Marshall Rose. The group must deliver the final version of the Internet-Draft in December. This fact, coupled with the fact there are no meetings currently planned between now and December, means the group has to use the network to get the work done. The MIB editor has agreed to have a new version of the SNA SDLC MIB every Thursday starting next week. They will be submitted to the Internet-Draft administrator at CNRI for file name assignment and distribution to the Internet-Draft directories but they will also be placed onto the cisco FTP server each Thursday (probably in the evening, west coast time) for speed of delivery to working group members. In order to have a new revision of the Internet-Draft each Thursday evening, all proposed changes to the draft must be submitted to the mailing list by 4:00 p.m. PST Thursday. If there are no changes to the SDLC MIB for a particular week, a notice to that effect will be posted to snadlcmib. Regardless of whether there is a new revision of the draft available for a given week, the latest revision can always be found at ftp.cisco.com as draft-ietf-snadlc-sdlc-mib.txt. If you have trouble accessing this file, send e-mail directly to wclark@cisco.com. LLC2 MIB The group had no plans to look at the LLC2 MIB. There was some discussion of deferring this to a future working group, though Ken Key proposed that the existing SNADLC Working Group develop a new charter and a new timeline specifically for LLC2. In other words, a new working group is not necessary but a redirection of the existing group would do. MIB Architecture The SDLC MIB sits beneath the SNA NAU Services MIB and is referenced by it. There is a tight coupling between the SDLC MIB and RS-232 MIB since many of the port attributes for SDLC are addressed by RS-232. Extensions to the RS-232 MIB will be proposed for attributes that are unique to the SDLC environment (e.g., NRZI, controlled RTS, etc.). (This will be the subject of a follow on posting to the snadlcmib mailing list.) There are two managed entities in the MIB Architecture: 1. Physical ports 2. Logical link stations There are three management tables: 1. admin table 2. oper table 3. stats table The primary and secondary links are supported. It was mentioned that there are five tables rather than the expected six. This is because port statistics are covered in the RS-232 MIB. Proposed Changes to the SDLC MIB Internet-Draft Work on the MIB during the meeting included: o Error code definitions o Include branch number o Conformance statements o Others - Statement in the MIB regarding the subject of ``rationale'' behind some of the objects. This is so that a network administrator can actually use the MIB to perform network management operations (what a concept!). - Discussion of the need for dynamic row creation for ports and link stations. - Conformance of the SDLC MIB's SMI to the syntax of SNMPv2 rather than SNMPv1 MIB Changes This topic will be covered in detail in a follow on posting to the snadlcmib mailing list. o Some simple verbiage will be placed in the MIB to provide a minimal amount of information about some of the more common aspects of SDLC. Candidates are: - primary vs. secondary link stations - multipoint vs. point-to-point connections - leased vs. switched References will be made to the SDLC General Information manual where necessary but preference will be given to explaining these concepts in plain English. o Enhance the MIB to contain fields such as CONTACT-INFO, etc. such as found in the last revision of the SNA NAU MIB. o Drop the snaDLC level of indirection to the SDLC MIB o Given that SDLC runs across links that vary widely in speed (e.g., 2400 baud to T1), we decided to drop the range on timers. o All timers will be INTEGER and not TimeTicks o All timers will be normalized to 100ths of a second (we currently have minutes, seconds, 10ths of a second, and 100ths of a second). An effect of doing this is that the names of the MIB objects should be changed from their current NCP name orientation to something generic. This is done in order to reduce the chance of a knowledgeable Systems Programmer assuming the units are the same as for NCP. o Some objects were moved around relative to their importance (the old sequence was mostly done in order of definition). o Formalize the interdependencies between MIB objects in the DESCRIPTION field by addressing them by object name and value. Use the SNMPv2 reference clause where possible. o Change the SMI to match the syntax requirements of SNMPv2 instead of SNMPv1. Changes to the MIB resulting from this IETF meeting will be available by Monday, November 8. Action Items Several action items resulted from the meeting. Wayne Clark Investigate the use of SNMPv2's reference clauses within the SDLC MIB. The latest FDDI MIB (RFC 1512) to be used as an example. Check with Alan Bartky of Sync Research on the need for sdlcLSAdminXid. E-mail the list of RS-232 requirements to snadlcmib for review. This is in preparation for making the list available to the RS-232 MIB working group Submit changes to draft-ietf-snadlc-sdlc-mib.txt by Monday, November 8. . Ken Key Investigate the applicability of row creation for SDLC link stations and make a recommendation to the working group. Jeff Hilgeman Query snadlcmib to see if the timestamps in the MIB are useful. (Objects in question are sdlcLSOperCreateTime, etc.) Shannon Nix Investigate whether there is any overlap between the timestamps and those in the ifTable. E-mail recommendations on MIB object name changes so as not to clash with NCP-defined names. Attendees Michael Allen moallen@ralvm6.vnet.ibm.com Jia-bing Cheng cheng@ralvm6.vnet.ibm.com Wayne Clark wclark@cisco.com Cleve Graves cvg@oc.com Jeff Hilgeman jeffh@apertus.com Kenneth Key key@snmp.com Zbigniew Kielczewski zbig@eicon.qc.ca William Kwan kwan@rabbit.com Shannon Nix sdn@netlink.com Jon Penner jjp@bscs.uucp Barbara Sterling bjs@mcdata.com Mauro Zallocco mdz@netlink.com