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But instead of being knee-deep in new standards, we are left with just a single one: SNMP -- in its original form. Even though we*ve seen two revisions, which added security and bulk transfer features, SNMP 1 is still the only widely available version. Moreover, even though this standard is 10 years old, it is inconsistently implemented, according to Chris Wellens of InterWorking Labs, an SNMP compliance testing vendor. Differences in the way statistics are gathered, stored and reported differ from SNMP agent to agent.

There is one ray of sunshine. In 1998, a management schema called CIM (Common Information Model), defined by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), began to take shape. Just this fall certification testing began. The promise of CIM is that we'll have a common way of reporting management data, so regardless of vendor, management applications could correlate across network infrastructure servers and systems. This singular name space offers real promise, but sadly, it has yet to materialize, except for a few products that can offer up stored data in a CIM format.

The standards burden may well fall back onto SNMP, with the SNMP Configuration working group looking as though it will finally make RFC status early next year. Besides a best-practice management policy document, on tap is a MIB that normalizes information about what a device can support, such as queuing type or security, and info like time of day or class of service.

It may sound like a cob job, but remember that SNMP already offers a single name space and is widely distributed. Now if we could only get all the agents to report the same information in the same way. I guess it's job security.