Harry,
I appreciate the comments.
1. I would not necessarily exclude "the rest", but I suggest that we optimize the approach for the kind of operations that would be most important to a remote extra-enterprise monitor. Further, there is the "turf" issue. One of the most critical requirements of whatever we come up with is that enterprises will accept it. The local management facility probably will have no objection to the extra-enterprise entity doing accurate billing, providing supplies "just-in-time" and showing up to fix a problem promptly. The local management facility will probably object if the extra-enterprise monitor changes setup, trashes jobs, or in any other way interferes with the local people doing their job. I agree that there are some cases when more extensive control is desirable (e.g., a rental company shutting off a machine because of non-payment, or the case where there is no local management). Perhaps we may need to define a "level of control" parameter that is set when the capability is installed, that cannot be changed remotely, and that limits what the monitor can do.
2. Your desire to expand the scope to include the semantics for device management is noted. I believe that you also agreed that the capability must be compatible with the existing equipment base. If this is the consensus in the group, then I would suggest partitioning the effort, probably among transport, coding and semantics.
3. I agree with your general position on alignment with similar activities. We need to get the sense of the group on this point.
4. The ability to traverse the firewalls is inherent on the basic definition of the activity. Considering Ira's input on the CIM effort, I think the question will boil down to:
a. do we get a port assigned and disallow the use of any other port?
b. do we get a port assigned but still allow the use of Port 80
c. do we remain silent on the port number?
I will list considerations with the set of issues.
Best regards,
Bill Wagner
William A. Wagner (Bill Wagner)
Director of Technology
Imaging Division
NETsilicon, Inc.
781-398-4588
-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 12:57 AM
To: Wagner,William
Cc: 'Wbmm (E-mail)
Subject: RE: WBMM> RE: Scope and Starting Point
1.a. - I agree... but I have a feeling I'm reading more into ("etc.") than you may. You've listed usage, alerts, diagnostics, configuration, downloading resources, downloading executables (presumably diagnostic or interrogative in nature) and upgrading (remotely)... there seems to be very little remaining that is done via SNMP today... so why not include "the rest" ... like taking the device off-line, reading or writing the OpPanel, ... "ETC...".?
1. b. - Yes, I've expressed several times that I believe we should address the semantics for device management - just as we've recently done for job submission and management and we should specifically try to clean up some of the toxic waste we spilled in the status area during the early MIB days ("magic decoder ring", "agent orange" ).
2. I think we should make ourselves aware of existing or emerging standards in the area. I don't think we should force alignment or compliance unless we can clearly articulate the benefit and honestly feel there is a very good chance that alignment will result in adoption. While the Printer MIB is probably one of the most useful standards ever in terms of heterogeneous printer management, most of the pretzel twists we encountered to align with a larger cause never really achieved the hoped for result (my opinion).
I feel we should leverage our own positive model and experience with the semantic model. No one questions whether SM is the right thing to do. The SM springboards from our most recent job protocol... IPP into the web environment and does facilitate firewall scenarios I view WBMM as doing the same thing... springboard off Printer, Finisher MIBs onto web protocols via a common (device) semantic model.
3. We need to nail this firewall discussion early. I do agree that we want to facilitate solutions that can cross the firewall... similar to the way we've done PSI. I hear others reacting to this requirement as if it is an inappropriate goal. This will drag on and haunt us later if not put to rest.
----------------------------------------------
Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
----------------------------------------------
"Wagner,William" <WWagner at NetSilicon.com>
Sent by: owner-wbmm at pwg.org
02/20/2003 03:03 PM
To: "'Wbmm (E-mail)" <wbmm at pwg.org>
cc:
Subject: RE: WBMM> RE: Scope and Starting Point
Bob Tailor had a very good suggestion. "..try to identify the issues before [the conference call]
so you might ask that everyone post them to WBMM before the meeting. For "simple" issues, we may be able to knock them off in email, saving our phone time for the more significant/contentious issues."
I had intended that sort of thing in asking for comments on the write-up (or any other comments that were felt to be germane). But an explicit request may be more fruitful.
Please forward your issues to the list!
Lets start with a few that I see.
1. Basic purpose: I have defined it as access by an external agent to imaging devices on an enterprise network, for the purpose of monitoring usage and alerts, perhaps for doing maintenance tests and general configuration, and perhaps for downloading files including executables, fonts, upgrades, etc.
a. Do we have agreement on this?
b. Is there a strong feeing that the scope must be expanded, and if so, how?
2. Consideration of the approaches in the documents referenced by Ira, Lee and Don (thank you all). Should we embrace, ignore, or possibly extract some aspects from which ones?
My contention is:
a. as overall approaches, all seem to lack the concept of finessing firewalls
b. approaches intended for managing/configuring networks miss the problems of an external agent trying to manage devices on the network. The MIS people want some inherent restrictions on what the external site can do, and in many cases, want to be able to monitor messages being sent out to make sure that there is nothing untoward.
c. we may however, want to consider some other aspects of the other approaches. Perhaps the coding or the notion of XML coded RPCs.
3. Is there general agreement on the use of HTTP clients operating in a Browser-like mode as the mechanism to finesse firewall?
Please feel free to add issues!
Many thanks,
Bill Wagner/NetSilicon
-----Original Message-----
From: TAYLOR,BOB (HP-Vancouver,ex1) [mailto:bobt at hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2003 3:49 PM
To: Wagner,William
Subject: FW: WBMM> RE: Scope and Starting Point
3/4 4-5 EST works for me. One suggestion: Given that you only are
allocating one hour, it might be good to try to identify the issues before
then, so you might ask that everyone post them to WBMM before the meeting.
For "simple" issues, we may be able to knock them off in email, saving our
phone time for the more significant/contentious issues.
bt
-----Original Message-----
From: Wagner,William [mailto:WWagner at NetSilicon.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 6:11 PM
To: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: WBMM> RE: Scope and Starting Point
Greetings:
I have attached some thoughts on the use cases the WBMM should be
addressing, and taken a cut at defining a starting point. The document is
posted to:
ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/wbmm/white/wbmm_Scope&Start.pdf
I would appreciate some feedback with the objective of finding common ground
within the working group. Would a conference call on 4 March, 4-5 PM EST be
agreeable?
Bill Wagner
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