CORBA/SNMP Gateway : Java Based Implementation using Visibroker

Subrata Mazumdar, Ken Swanson, and Helena Sarin

Abstract
Run CORBA/SNMP Gateway based demo applets - not supported any more.
- View JavaDoc Files of CORBA/SNMP Gateway implementation
- CORBA/SNMP Gateway Client Usage Description - Java examples
- Programming model and usage examples (using C++) of the IDL interfaces in the SNMP part of the CORBA/TMN Interworking Specification.
- View the HTML version of the IDL interfaces of the SNMP specific extension of the CORBA Object Services.
  Following modules are SNMP specific: JIDM, SNMPMgmt and SNMPMIR.
- View the XML DTD and data for the MIB tables generated using the gateway.
Download Java based CORBA/SNMP Gateway (Source and Runtime) - Please register first
Please follow the instruction to navigate to the CORBA/SNMP gateway project download page.
SNMP-SMI to IDL Translator
- View already converted MIB files in HTML
Preliminary list of improvement and extensions needed for CORBA/SNMP Gateway implementation
SUN's NEO ORB based implementation (previous prototype)
Papers Related to CORBA/SNMP Gateway
- Subrata Mazumdar, "Directory Enabled Management Information Base - Integration of MIB with Directories using COSNaming and JNDI" , Bell Laboratories TM # BL0113540-98.07.22-02, presented at the Ninth IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations & Management, Newark, Delaware, USA, October 26-30, 1998.
- OMG Telecom DTF , CORBA/TMN Interworking Specification
  - CORBA/TMN Interworking Specification - SNMP Part (only)
  - Programming model and usage examples of the IDL interfaces in the SNMP part of the CORBA/TMN Interworking Specification.
  - Revised SNMP-SMI to IDL Specification Translation - Revision of the SNMP Part of the "Inter-Domain Management: Specification Translation" preliminary specification.
    (The revised version is used in the Interworking specification).
    CORBA/SNMP Interworking Specification - Lucent's initial submission in response to the CORBA/TMN RFP. The intial submission inlcudes both the specification and interworking translation.
    This spec also includes SNMP version specific IDL interfaces which are dropped in the final submission.
  - View the HTML version of the IDL interfaces of the SNMP specific extension of the CORBA Object Services defined in the CORBA/SNMP Interworking spec.
    Following modules are SNMP specific: JIDM, SNMPMgmt and SNMPMIR.
  - Download the IDL files (in tar.Z format) for SNMP specific extension of the CORBA Object Services.
JIDM Home page - links to other CORBA/SNMP and CORBA/TMN Gateway implementations/products.

Abstract

The CORBA/SNMP gateway makes the remote SNMP agents appear as CORBA server by extending the CORBA naming, event and interface repository object services. The gateway dynamically generates CORBA object references for the SNMP MIB table entries and converts the SNMP traps to CORBA events. The CORBA/SNMP gateway also dynamically converts method invoked on the object references for MIB entries to SNMP messages for remote agent. The CORBA/SNMP gateway uses the CORBA DSI factlities in oder to provide generic implementation of IDL interfaces obtained from any arbitrary SNMP MIB modules using the existing MIB implementation supported by remote SNMP agents.

The CORBA/SNMP gateway provides interfaces between between applications in CORBA domain and SNMP based network management agents. The application developers in CORBA domain need not know SNMP in order to access the MIB supported by the SNMP agents. The management applications in CORBA domain use either the stubs generated from the MIB->IDL->Java conversion or the DII interface of the ORB. The gateway supports the addition/changes to MIB by updating the CORBA interface repository using the IDL file generated by the updated MIB definition.

The CORBA/SNMP gateway is implemented using Visibroker for Java 4.1. The CORBA/SNMP gateway runs on top of either Westhawk's freeware Java SNMPv1 stack version 3.3 or AdventNet SNMP Release 3.0 .

The implementation of the gateway consists of following services as defined in the OMG specification for CORBA/TMN interworking (SNMP part)

SNMP Name service - extension CORBA naming service to navigate the entries of remote MIB
SNMP Notification service - extension of CORBA event service to convert SNMP traps/notifications to CORBA events; management applications use CORBA event services to receive traps.
SNMP MIB Repository service - extension of CORBA IFR to obtain meta information about the MIB tables/groups
SNMP Protocol service - provides a generic interface to various version of SNMP protocols as well as different implementation of SNMP stack;

ProxyAgent service - CORBA DSI based implementation for mapping CORBA operation invocations into SNMP GET/SET messages;
A gateway for dynamic generation of XML DTD and XML data for SNMP MIBs.

In order to show the capabilities of the CORBA/SNMP gateway, we have written a MIB browser application using the JDK 1.2.x.
The Gateway can also acts as service provider for JNDI for browsing SNMP MIB.
The Gateway also provides service for dynamic generation XML DTD as well as XML data for the MIB table. .

The software includes following tool kits:

ASN.1/SMI to IDL translator ; the translator is compliant with SNMP part of X/Open-TM Forum sponsored "Inter-Domain Management: Specification Translation" document.
Java Servlet/Web-server based on-line SNMP-SMI->IDL conversion tool kit;
A gateway between management applications in CORBA domain and network management agents in SNMP domain.
Java application for browsing SNMP MIB, a shell script to use JNDI browser to browse SNMP MIB, and an application for browsing SNMP MIB based on XML data.
Java examples of usage of the CORBA/SNMP gateway.

Note:
The Java based CORBA/SNMP gateway software is reimplementation of the NEO-based C++ implementation (in October 1996) of the original gateway. The Java based version is now compliant with the OMG specification for CORBA/SNMP gateway.

E-mail: mazum@avaya.com
Last modified: Mon Oct 23 12:23:44 EDT 2000 by Subrata Mazumdar