Subject: Protocol Action: Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol to Draft Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 12:19:57 -0500

The IESG has elevated the Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol
(RFC2741) and Definitions of Managed Objects for Extensible SNMP Agents
(RFC 2742) to Draft Standard.  These documents were the product of the
SNMP Agent Extensibility Working Group.

The contact persons are Bert Wijnen and Randy Bush.

Technical Summary
 
  RFC2741 defines a standardized framework for extensible SNMP agents.
  It defines processing entities called master agents and subagents,
  a protocol (AgentX) used to communicate between them, and the
  elements of procedure by which the extensible agent processes SNMP
  protocol messages.

  RFC2742 defines a portion of the Management Information Base (MIB)
  for use with network management protocols in the Internet community.
  In particular, it describes objects managing SNMP agents that use
  the Agent Extensibility (AgentX) Protocol.

Working Group Summary

  The working group collected 13 implementation and interoperability
  reports. The WG implementation report from the WG chair is at:

     http://www.ietf.org/IESG/Implementations/AGENTX-IMPLEMENTATION

  These reports demonstrated that all AgentX features have been
  implemented by two or more independent implementations and that
  sub-agents from one implementation are able to interoperate
  with master agents from an independent implementation.  A number
  of the implementations are found in well-known commercial SNMP
  products; several are found in widely distributed academic and/or
  "open source" projects; implementations beyond those with filed
  reports are known to exist.

  Neither the referenced implementation reports nor the WG Last Call
  identified any changes to the these RFCs that are required for
  implementation or interoperability.

  The working group consensus is that these documents are ready for
  advancement to Draft Standard.

Protocol Quality

  The documents have been reviewed for the IESG by Randy Bush and
  Bert Wijnen

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From: "David T. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 11:53:12 -0800

HI,

While I do not want to derail the agent-X work, I certainly find
troubling the implementation report specified in the URL below.
It (by itself) does not provide to me the sufficient detail
to determine if the IETF requirements for advancement to draft
were achieved. I do know the WG chair and many of the WG members
and trust their good judgement. However, a page or two of additional
documentation would go a long way in helping the historians
determine that interoperability of all aspects was truely achieved
and that the technology was deployed and found to be useful.

Regards,
/david t. perkins