craig@LOKI.BBN.COM (Craig Partridge) (01/22/87)
As you have no doubt noticed, my original posting announcing a group
working on a monitoring protocol has induced a flurry of responses from
interested parties. In this note I try to summarize where things stand.
It turns out that there are somewhat more people working on
monitoring than I thought. DCA/DDN PMO and DARPA are both sponsoring
work in this area, as are several companies, including BBN and Mitre,
and several Internet Task Forces. In addition, various standards
bodies, including ISO, MAP and IEEE are actively working in this area.
I've talked with many reprentatives of these groups and they
are generally supportive -- there seems to be a consensus that
using a general monitoring protocol for NSFNET makes sense and that
studying the literature is the next step. The upshot is that I have a lot
of reading to do. I expect to be at part of the IETF meeting to talk
with people there (I'll also be at the Monterey TCP-IP Conference in March).
Furthermore, DARPA and BBN have agreed to make an implementation of
HMP that runs under 4.2 and 4.3bsd, and information on the monitoring
data gateways return, available to the community, to assist people working
with the day-to-day monitoring issues while we work our way towards a
more general standard. (Details on the distribution to follow).
Craig Partridge
NSF Network Service Center