Subject: David Finnie's suggestion of a new TP to propagate COS tables

From: "Marcia Peters (8-444-4380)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 95 15:15:57 EDT

David,

Having a way to manage COS tables sounds like a good idea, but I don't
like doing it with a new architected TP.  An approach that I prefer is
to use network management (say, the snmp mib defined for APPN) with
SNMP-over-SNA flows to distribute appropriate tables to different nodes.
This way the network administrator can tailor the tables as needed, and
there is no dependency on nodes having a similar NOF interface.  The mib
would have to support the COS variables being writable, and the node
itself would have to support user-modifiable COS tables (already a
requirement of APPN, I believe).

This would not require new architecture, just exploiting the management
architecture that the appn mib group is already working on.

What do you think?

Marcia Peters.................................IBM APPN Architecture

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From: "jim (j.) cobban" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 13:18:00 -0400

In message "David Finnie's suggestion of a new TP to propagate COS tables", 

>Marcia Peters.................................IBM APPN Architecture

I agree with Marcia's suggestion.  As we will certainly all agree there are
enormous advantages to support of a common APPN MIB on all platforms.  The
SNMP-over-SNA standard which we have just approved frees us from the bonds of
having to run a parallel IP network to gain access to the wealth of
information in the MIB.  I know that I was contemplating writing some APPC
transactions to gain remote access to some of the management information in
our node, when I realized that I would then be limiting myself to our own
nodes, or to competitor's nodes who chose to implement equivalent
transactions.  There I needed a good laugh this morning!  However choosing to
run the SNMP TPs gives us access, eventually, to everybody's nodes, with
little restriction on functionality.

Of course making the COS tables writable through the APPN MIB is decidedly
non-trivial.