[e2e] Port numbers, SRV records or...?

[Craig Partridge]

In message <a0623091dc0fcec9f35de@[10.0.1.12]>, John Day writes:

>they do in IP.  Realizing that applications and application protocols 
>were distinct, etc. CMIP was more powerful and yielded smaller 
>implementations than SNMP, (although HEMS would have been better than 
>either one) etc.  But as I say, it still wasn't right.

[Aside -- smaller isn't always better, though it is often a hint.
Recall, SNMP launched because, at the start, it was smaller than CMIP/HEMS.
One issue was that SNMP left out functions that CMIP/HEMS anticipated
were needed.]

Speaking of bandaids, paradigm problems and the like, pardon me while I
toss a pebble into the pond.  I think, in network management, we're
in danger of institutionalizing MIB variables for another generation
of technology (perhaps calling them "objects", but same deal).

Yet when faced with things that are, fundamentally, collections of
software dip switches, I note that we seem to have no nice elegant
programming paradigm that allows us to create abstractions that hide
these switches (rather than expose them as 1,000s of MIB variables).
The knowledge plane was an attempt to create something intelligent
that mediated between this miasma of data and the typical clients that
want to know what is happening (with only selected squalid details).
But I keep wondering if there's a better paradigm for those virtual
dip switches.

And I think this problem is orthogonal to the other problem in network
management -- namely that we still have silo-based management environments
(e.g. ops different from install different from maintenance...).  Though
if we had a paradigm that solved both it would be nice.

Off soapbox...

Craig