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RFC 1270
Network Working Group F. Kastenholz, Editor
Request for Comments: 1270 Clearpoint Research Corporation
October 1991
SNMP Communications Services
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
unlimited.
Table of Contents
1. Abstract .............................................. 1
2. Introduction .......................................... 1
3. Standardization ....................................... 3
4. Interoperability ...................................... 3
5. To Transport or Not To Transport ...................... 3
6. Connection Oriented vs. Connectionless ................ 6
7. Which Protocol ........................................ 8
8. Security Considerations ............................... 9
9. Appendix .............................................. 9
10. References ........................................... 10
11. Acknowledgements ..................................... 11
12. Author's Address ..................................... 11
1. Abstract
This memo is being distributed to members of the Internet community as
an Informational RFC. The intent is to present a discussion on the
issues relating to the communications services for SNMP. While the
issues discussed may not be directly relevant to the research problems
of the Internet, they may be interesting to a number of researchers
and implementors.
2. Introduction
This document discusses various issues to be considered when
determining the underlying communications services to be used by an
SNMP implementation.
As reported in RFC 1052, IAB Recommendations for the Development of
Internet Network Management Standards [8], a two-prong strategy for
network management of TCP/IP-based internets was undertaken. In the
short-term, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), defined in
RFC 1067, was to be used to manage nodes in the Internet community.
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In the long-term, the use of the OSI network management framework was
to be examined. Two documents were produced to define the management
information: RFC 1065, which defined the Structure of Management
Information (SMI), and RFC 1066, which defined the Management
Information Base (MIB). Both of these documents were designed so as
to be compatible with both the SNMP and the OSI network management
framework.
This strategy was quite successful in the short-term: Internet-based
network management technology was fielded, by both the research and
commercial communities, within a few months. As a result of this,
portions of the Internet community became network manageable in a
timely fashion.
In May of 1990, the core documents were elevated to "Standard
Protocols" with "Recommended" status. As such, the Internet-standard
network management framework consists of: Structure and Identification
of Management Information for TCP/IP-based internets, RFC 1155 [9],
which describes how managed objects contained in the MIB are defined;
Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based
internets, which describes the managed objects contained in the MIB,
RFC 1156 [10]; and, the Simple Network Management Protocol, RFC 1157
[1], which defines the protocol used to manage these objects.
In parallel with this activity, documents specifying how to transport
SNMP messages over protocols other than UDP/IP have been developed and
published: SNMP Over Ethernet [3], SNMP Over OSI [2], and SNMP Over
IPX [6] and it would be suprising if more were not developed. These
memos have caused a degree of confusion in the community. This
document is intended to disperse that confusion by discussing the
issues of relevance to an implementor when choosing how to encapsulate
SNMP packets.
None of these documents have been made full Internet Standards. SNMP
Over ISO and SNMP Over Ethernet are both Experimental protocols. SNMP
Over IPX [6] is an Internet Draft. Only the SNMP Specification [1] is
an Internet Standard.
No single transport scheme can be considered the absolute best
solution for all circumstances. This note will argue that, except for
a very small set of special circumstances, operating SNMP over UDP/IP
is the optimal scheme.
This document does not present a standard or a protocol for the
Internet Community. For production use in the Internet the SNMP and
its required communication services are specified in [1].
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3. Standardization
Currently, the SNMP Specification [1] only specifies that the UDP
protocol be used to exchange SNMP messages. While the IAB may
standardize other protocols for use in exchanging SNMP messages in the
future, only UDP is currently standardized for this purpose.
In order to claim full compliance with the SNMP Specification, an
implementation would have to use UDP for SNMP message exchange.
4. Interoperability
Interoperability is the degree to which the equipment produced by one
vendor can can operate with equipment produced by another vendor.
Related to Interoperability is compliance with a standard. Everything
else being equal, a device that complies with some standard is more
likely to be interoperable than a device that does not.
For commercial product development, the pros and cons of developing an
interoperable product must be weighed and a choice made. Both
engineering and marketing organizations participate in this process.
The Internet is the single largest market for SNMP systems. A large
portion of SNMP systems will be developed with the Internet as a
target environment. Therefore, it may be expected that the Internet's
needs and requirements will be the driving force for SNMP. SNMP over
UDP/IP is specified as the "Internet Standard" protocol. Therefore,
in order to operate in the Internet and be managed in that environment
on a production basis, a device must support SNMP over UDP/IP. This
situation will lead to SNMP over UDP/IP being the most common method
of operating SNMP. Therefore, the widest degree of interoperability
and widest acceptance of a commercial product will be attained by
operating SNMP over UDP/IP.
The preponderance of UDP/IP based network management stations also
strongly suggests that an agent should operate SNMP over UDP/IP.
The results of the interoperability decision drive a number of
technical decisions. If interoperability is desired, then SNMP must be
operated over UDP/IP.
5. To Transport or Not To Transport
A major issue is whether SNMP should run on top of a transport-layer
protocol (such as UDP) or not. Typically, the choice is to run over a
transport/network/data link protocol or just run over the datalink.
In fact, several protocols have been published for operating SNMP over
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several different datalink and transport protocols.
Operation of SNMP over a Transport and Network protocol stack
is preferred. These protocols provide at least five functions
that are of vital importance to the movement of SNMP packets
through a network:
o Routing
The network layer provides routing functions, which
improves the overall utility of network management. The
network has the ability to re-route packets around failed
areas. This allows network management to continue
operating during localized losses of service (It should
be noted that these losses of service occur not only
because of failures, but also for non-failure reasons
such as preventive maintenance).
o Media Independence
The network layer provides a high degree of media
independence. By using this capability, many different
types of network elements may be managed. Tying SNMP to
a particular data link protocol limits the management
scope of those SNMP entities to just those devices that
use that datalink protocol.
o End-to-End Checksum
The end-to-end checksum provided by transport protocols
improves the reliability of the data transfer.
o Multiplexing/Demultiplexing
Transport protocols provide multiplexing and
demultiplexing services. These services facilitate the
many-to-many management relationships possible with SNMP.
o Fragmentation and Reassembly
This is related to media independence. IP allows SNMP
packets to transit media with differing MTU sizes. This
capability is not available for datalink specific
transmission schemes.
Fragmentation and Reassembly does reduce the overall
robustness of network management since, if any single
fragment is lost along the way, the operation will fail.
The worse the network operates, the higher the
probability that a fragment will get lost or delayed.
For monitoring and data gathering while the network is
operating normally, Fragmentation and Reassembly is not a
problem. When the network is operating poorly (and the
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network operators are typically trying to diagnose and
repair a failure), small packets should to be used,
preventing the packet from being fragmented.
There are other services and functions that are provided by a
connection oriented transport. These services and functions are not
desired for SNMP. A later section will explore this issue in more
detail.
The main drawbacks that are cited with respect to using Transport and
Network layers in the managed object are: a) Increased development
time and b) Increased resource requirements. These arguments are
less than compelling.
There are several excellent public domain or freely redistributable
UDP/IP stacks that provide enough support for SNMP. The effort
required to port the essential components of one of these stacks is
small compared to the overall effort of installing the SNMP software.
The additional resources required in the managed object to support
UDP/IP are minimal. CPU resources are required only when actually
transmitting or receiving a packet. The largest single resource
requirement of a UDP/IP is calculating the UDP checksum, which is
very small compared to the cost of doing the ASN.1 encoding/decoding,
Object Identifier lookup, and so on.
The author has personal knowledge of a UDP/IP stack that was
developed expressly for the purpose of supporting SNMP. This stack
requires less than 4Kb of code space. It is a minimalist
implementation of UDP/IP in that it is "just enough" so support SNMP.
This stack supports UDP, IP, ARP, and handles ICMP redirect and echo
request messages. Furthermore, this stack was developed by a single
person in approximately two months. Obviously, neither the
development effort nor the memory requirements are large.
The network overhead of using UDP/IP is relatively small. A UDP/IP
header requires 28 octets (assuming no IP options). Since the UDP is
connectionless, it will generate no overhead traffic of its own (such
as TCP SYNs, FINs, and ACKs).
The growing popularity of internetworking outside of The Internet
mandates that SNMP operate over, at least, a network layer protocol.
These internetworks consist of a number of networks all connected
together with routers. In order to traverse a router, a packet must
be one of the network layer protocols that the router understands.
Therefore, for SNMP management to be deployed in an internetwork, the
SNMP entities in that internetwork must use a network layer protocol.
SNMP over a datalink can not traverse a router.
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There are some circumstances where running SNMP over some datalink is
appropriate.
There are schemes are under development to provide Out-Of-Band (OOB)
management access to network devices. This OOB access is typically
provided over point-to-point or dial-up connections. Since these
connections are dedicated to OOB network management and go directly
from the network management station to the managed device, a
Transport/Network protocol may not be necessary.
Using a Transport/Network protocol on these links may be easier from
a development point of view though. It is probably a simple
configuration operation to have the management station's IP use a
serial port rather than the "normal" (e.g., Ethernet) port for
traffic destined for a particular node.
If the Out-Of-Band link is also used as a "primary" route to some
nodes, then the functions of a network-layer are required. These
functions are readily supplied by using UDP/IP.
For a datalink interface and driver (e.g., a PC Ethernet interface
card) that must be manageable independent of the higher level
protocol suite (which might NOT be manageable), operating SNMP
directly over the datalink is reasonable. It is not known, a priori,
what higher-level protocol services may be available, so those
services can not be used. If an arbitrary choice is made for
example, to put in an elementary UDP/IP stack, then there may be two
independent UDP/IPs in the system (which is undesireable as this
would require two IP addresses per managed node), or a new protocol
stack will be introduced into the environment.
6. Connection Oriented vs. Connectionless
While this section primarily addresses itself to transport layer
issues, its basic discussion of connection oriented vs connectionless
applies to any layer which provides communication services for SNMP.
For SNMP, connectionless transport service (UDP) is specified in the
Protocol Specification [1]. This choice was made after careful study
and consideration by the original SNMP developers.
The prime motivation of this choice is that SNMP must continue to
operate (if at all possible) when the network is operating at its
worst. For other applications, such as Telnet or FTP, the user can
always "try again later" if the network is operating poorly. On the
other hand, the major purpose of a network management protocol is to
fix the network when it is operating poorly so the "try again later"
strategy is useless.
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By using a connectionless transport protocol, SNMP takes on the
responsibility of reliable data transmission (A SNMP application may
time out outstanding requests and either retransmit them or abort
them as appropriate). However, the SNMP requires these functions
only of the sender of a Request PDU (get, getNext, or Set), which
typically is a network management station. Since the Agent only
generates responses, it need not perform any of these functions.
This vastly reduces the resource and functional requirements on the
Agent.
If a connection oriented transport is used, then a fundamental design
choice must be made with respect to connection maintenance:
(1) Keep a connection open to each managed object on the
network,
(2) Establish and tear down connections on a per-operation
basis, or
(3) Keep a fixed number of connections open and, when another
connection is needed, use some algorithm (e.g., LRU) to
select one for closing and opening to the new agent.
All of these alternatives pose severe problems, and because of them,
each is undesirable.
The first option reduces the amount of resources required to perform
a single operation in that the connection establishment and
termination cost is "amortized" over many operations. On the other
hand, keeping a connection open implies that the management station
needs to maintain a large number of connection records (in the
hundreds or even thousands). Furthermore, if either side of the
connection engages in "keep-alives" (even though such behavior is
frowned upon), a large amount of traffic will be generated, consuming
a large amount of network resources, all for no gain.
The second option reduces the amount of idle resources such as
connection records, but vastly increases the amount of resources
required to perform an operation. A connection must be established,
the request Message sent and the response returned, and then the
connection closed for each operation. For a TCP, this would
typically require 10 separate packet transfers plus the TCP Time-Wait
(see the Appendix for details).
In the face of pathological network problems, a connection oriented
transport protocol may simply cease to operate because the
probability of getting all of these packets through reduces to a very
small number.
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The third option requires that the management station maintain
connection usage information in order to implement the LRU algorithm.
This excessively complicates the management station. Furthermore,
this option tends to reduce to the second option when doing health
check polling for a number of agents that is large compared to the
number of supported connections.
A connection oriented transport protocol may provide services that
are undesirable or unneeded by SNMP.
For example, one application of network management is to poll nodes
to determine if they are up or not. When a node is up, it makes
little difference whether SNMP operates over TCP or UDP. However, if
the node goes down then TCP will eventually close the connection.
Every poll request must then be translated into a TCP Open request
while the managed node is down. Once the node comes up, the send
must then be done.
For connection oriented transports, the transport ACK does not
necessarily indicate delivery of data to the destination application
process (for TCP, see section 2.6 of [4]). The SNMP would still need
its own timeout/retry procedure to ensure that the SNMP software
actually got the packet.
A connection oriented transport such as TCP provides flow control for
the data stream. Because of the lock-step nature of SNMP protocol
exchanges, this is not a service that SNMP requires.
Architectural purists may argue that an "Application" layer entity
(SNMP) must not perform operations that are properly the realm of the
Transport layer (timeouts, retransmissions, and so on). While
architecturally pure, this line of reasoning is not relevant. The
network management applications and protocols are monitoring the
"health" of the network and, as a result, have the best information
and are in the best position to adapt their own behavior to the state
of the network, and thereby, continuing operations in the face of
network adversity.
7. Which Protocol
The final point of discussion is the actual choice of a protocol to
support SNMP.
If a device is destined for use in the Internet then it must operate
SNMP over UDP/IP.
If the device is operating in some other protocol environment, then
SNMP ought to use the transport services that are native to that
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RFC 1270 SNMP Communications Services October 1991
environment. It may make very little sense to introduce a new
protocol stack into a network in order to provide just one service.
For example, it could require that the network operations staff
understand and be able to administer and operate two protocol stacks,
that hosts and routers understand both protocols, and so on. It may
also be bureaucratically impossible to introduce UDP/IP into the
environment (the "We are only a FOONET shop - if it doesn't speak
FOONET, we don't want it" argument).
References [2] and [6] are experimental standards for operating SNMP
over IPX and OSI respectively. In these environments, those
standards ought to be adhered to.
8. Security Considerations
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
9. Appendix
This appendix details the TCP packet transfers required to perform a
single SNMP operation assuming that the connection is established
only for that operation and that a single SNMP operation (e.g., get
request) is performed. We also assume that all operations are
"normal" i.e., that there are no lost packets, no simultaneous opens,
no half opens, and no simultaneous closes. We also ignore the
possibility of TCP segmentation and IP fragmentation.
The nomenclature used to illustrate the packet transactions is the
same as that used in the TCP Specification [4].
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Packet Management Managed
Number Station Object
Connection Open...
1 >--<CTL=SYN>----------------------->
2 <--<CTL=SYN,ACK>-------------------<
3 >--<CTL=ACK>----------------------->
Connection now open,
SNMP Request is sent.
4 >--<DATA=SNMP Request>------------->
Response comes back
5 <--<DATA=SNMP Response, CTL=ACK>---<
6 >--<CTL=ACK>----------------------->
Operation is complete,
Management station initiates the
close.
7 >--<CTL=FIN,ACK>------------------->
8 <--<CTL=ACK>-----------------------<
9 <--<CTL=FIN,ACK>-------------------<
10 >--<CTL=ACK>----------------------->
Wait 2 MSL
Connection now closed.
Some optimizations are possible IF the TCP has knowledge of the type
of operation. However, a general purpose TCP would not be tuned to
SNMP operations so those optimizations would not be done.
10. References
[1] Case, J., Fedor, M., Schoffstall, M., and J. Davin, "Simple
Network Management Protocol", RFC 1157, SNMP Research,
Performance Systems International, Performance Systems
International, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, May 1990.
[2] Rose, M., Editor, "SNMP over OSI", RFC 1161, Performance Systems
International, Inc., June 1990.
[3] Schoffstall, M., Davin, C., Fedor, M., and J. Case, "SNMP over
Ethernet", RFC 1089, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MIT
Laboratory for Computer Science, NYSERNet, Inc., University of
Tennessee at Knoxville, February 1989.
[4] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol - DARPA Internet
Program Protocol Specification", RFC 793, DARPA, September 1981.
[5] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", RFC 768, USC/Information
Sciences Institute, August 1980.
[6] Wormley, R., "SNMP Over IPX", draft in process, August 1990.
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RFC 1270 SNMP Communications Services October 1991
[7] Postel, J., Editor, "IAB Official Protocol Standards", RFC 1250,
IAB, August 1991.
[8] Cerf, V., "IAB Recommendations for the Development of Internet
Network Management Standards", RFC 1052, NRI, April 1988.
[9] Rose M., and K. McCloghrie, "Structure and Identification of
Management Information for TCP/IP-based internets", RFC 1155,
Performance Systems International, Hughes LAN Systems, May 1990.
[10] McCloghrie K., and M. Rose, "Management Information Base for
Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets", RFC 1156, Hughes
LAN Systems, Performance Systems International, May 1990.
11. Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Jeff Case, Chuck Davin and Keith
McCloghrie for their technical and editorial contributions to this
document.
12. Author's Address
Frank Kastenholz
Clearpoint Research Corporation
35 Parkwood Drive
Hopkinton, Mass. 01748
Phone: (508) 435-2000
Email: kasten@europa.clearpoint.com
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