CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Henry Clark/OARnet

Minutes of the Operational Statistics Working Group (OPSTAT)

The session stared with a review of the group's charter and history.
The group's original and current charter is to look at operational
statistics and methods of using and viewing them in operational
networks.  RFC 1404 is an intermediate result in developing tools and
additional methods of allowing the exchange and viewing of data between
networks or a provider and its customers.


Client-Server

After making a brief overview, Henry Clark discussed his work on the
client-server data retrieval method.  His server is complete, and the
client is partially done.  Several questions were raised:


   o Access control?

     A paragraph will be placed in the Internet-Draft about the need for
     access control through the server, but no specification of such
     will be placed in the document.

   o Data presentation to user?

     We discussed recommendations about client ``standard'' presentation
     methods.  We agreed that since the data from the server should be
     returned in RFC 1404 format for portability, it may be that the
     client would offer a variety of formats to the user, ranging from
     saving in a file, to sending to a printer, to drawing a nice
     X-windows graphs.  A later document of the working group may
     recommend standard report formats.

   o How aggregate vars to user?

     This was a meta-discussion on how individual SNMP variables might
     be aggregated into a single variable.  This was seen as useful but
     extremely hard.  This is a topic for future discussion.

   o How much of client in RFC?

     A paragraph making suggestions about some of the ways a client
     might present data to the user will be included, but no ``oughts''
     or ``musts'' will be included.


Some discussion of presentation versus storage started.  Some folks, for
efficiency reasons, may not store data in RFC 1404 format, but would run
the server so that the data could be retrieved in RFC 1404 format.


Accounting Stuff

A host attached to a network observes data packets and builds a table of
data flows.  Flows the meter are interested in is described by a set of
rules that match a pattern.  Several graphs were displayed.  If you are
interested in this topic, go to the ACCT2 BOF on Wednesday.



PREPnet/PSC

PREPnet has been funded by NSF to query SNMP variables and store them in
RFC 1404 format.  Code should be available by the July IETF. They are
using the CMU SNMP for queries.  Some minimal presentation tools will be
included.  They hope to be done with the implementation by February
1995, and there is some money for maintenance.

Suggested changes to RFC 1404 by Nevil Brownlee:


  1. Change ``Kbps'' to ``kbps''

  2. Disallow white space as field separators; use commas within record
     and semicolon at end

  3. Allow a single device section -- felt that was useful so make big
     files and not lots of little files

  4. Multiple label sections:  ptrs to files

  5. Require brackets around tag table, variable list, tag name, and
     data value list


Items 2, 4, and 5 were felt to be useful.  Item 3, although seen as
useful, would reduce functionality since small numbers of large files
are useful in some environments.  No opinions were expressed about item
1.  Further discussion will be held on the mailing list.



Goals and Milestones

This section will be updated as:


   o Revised RFC 1404 Internet-Draft - July 94
   o New Internet-Draft C-S July 1994
   o Preliminary statistics document - November 94


Previously there had been some work surrounding a ``Statistics MIB.''
This issue may be revisited later.


Attendees

Jon Boone                boone@psc.edu
Michael Brescia          brescia@bbn.com
J. Nevil Brownlee        nevil@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz
David Chen               dchen@vnet.ibm.com
Henry Clark              henryc@oar.net
Mark Knopper             mak@aads.net
J. Scott Marcus          smarcus@bbn.com
Ken Masica               masic@es.net
Daniel McRobb            dwm@noc.ans.net
Marsha Perrott           perrott@prep.net
Peter Phillips           pphillip@cs.ubc.ca
Bernhard Stockman        boss@ebone.net