Network Information Model Requirements
draft-durham-nim-req-01

Abstract

As networking technology has evolved, a diverse set of technologies has been deployed to manage the resulting products. These very from Web based products, standard management protocols, and text scripts. The underlying systems to be manipulated are represented in varying ways including implicitly in the programmatics, with proprietary data descriptions, or with standardized descriptions using a range of technologies including MIBs, PIBs, or LDAP schemas. The result is that a single application such as DHCP or Differentiated Services may be represented in many different inconsistent fashions. Even the existing standard descriptive technologies have not been focussed on re-use across domains and commonality. The situation would be significantly improved if there were to be a common representation of data (an 'information model') from which technology-specific data models can be derived to suit application- specific configuration and management needs. This would allow the industry to build common descriptions, resulting in consistency across the paradigms, and better interoperability. Such an 'information model' would also assist other IETF working groups by reducing the work needed to determine how to represent those parts of their technology that are already in the common model.

Authors

Walter Weiss
David Durham
Andrea Westerinen

(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)