Network Management Requirements (was: Re: Questions on the Draft)

[kempf <James.Kempf@sun.com>]

Hi John,


>James, I noticed that the draft seems to lack specific requirements for the
>possible role of  the mobile stations to aid remote and distributed
>management of themselves, networks and services For example, the ability to
>load a new application on the MS or a new TCP stack or dynamically change
>the operating parameters of OS functions or TCP stack (e.g. change the TCP
>window size to allow for different serve levels, dynamically adjust RTTs,..
>etc.). This might be included under other topics but you may want to
>specifically spelling out requirements in this area.      Regards  John
>

Yes, good observation. 

The draft seems to be fairly weak on specific requirements around
management,  provisioning, etc. It only says "use standard IETF
network management protocols" which is fine in as far as it goes, but
it is entirely possible for, say, one vendor to define a MIB one
way and another to define it another way, so that managment is
incompatible even though SNMP is used. So additionally, I think
there needs to be a requirement for standardized managed object
definitions.

Also, as you point out, there is nothing about service provisioning on the 
phone, though I wonder exactly what role IETF might have there. There
has been some talk about using Java in this role, and I suppose IETF
could define something like ICAP for phones that would allow provisioning,
or something like that, but it is not clear to me whether this would
make any sense.

I think it also might make sense to explicitly mention interoperable
management of radio access networks. I'm told that, despite common
radio access protocols in UTRAN for example, radio access networks
are typically one vendor solutions because network managment is
not interoprable. Having interoperable network management would
at least give operators the option of mixing and matching.

		jak