Management Research Position Statement

		       David Harrington, Huawei

I am an IETF-focused person, and I see a disconnect between the
requirements of the telecomm industry, which is beginning to dominate
the IP-based Internet, and the management protocols that exist in the
IETF (e.g. SNMP) and are being developed in the IETF (e.g. Netconf).

I think research needs to be done about how the IETF datacomm-based
management approach needs to change to better accommodate the
management of emerging networks and services that operate over the
Internet. This would include inter-domain management, peer-to-peer
sharing of mgmt info, and standardization of mgmt above the
router/switch/device level.

A second area of research is solution reuse (especially in the IETF).
The use of reusable (standardized) components has been shown to be
highly beneficial in equipment design and software development,
reducing development costs and improving consistency across products
and across vendors. But surprisingly, it is unclear whether component
reuse is as beneficial during the process of developing standards in
an organization like the IETF.

The IETF is an engineering organization, and the problems of reuse in
developing standards are not well understood. It would be appropriate
for the NMRG, in particular, to analyze the issues involved and
provide guidance to the IETF about the benefits and costs of trying to
move to reusable components in the development of IETF management
standards. 

Part of the research into reusable components should also consider
whether moving to a component-based network management "architecure"
or approach could better meet the emerging needs for services and
multi-domain management.

David Harrington
dharrington@huawei.com 
dbharrington@comcast.net
ietfdbh@comcast.net