Internet DRAFT - draft-huebner-ncap-prot
draft-huebner-ncap-prot
NetIQ Common Agent Protocol Roger Huebner
Internet-Draft NetIQ Corp.
Expires: August 16, 2004 February 16, 2004
The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol
draft-huebner-ncap-prot-00
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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This Internet-Draft will expire on August 16, 2004.
Abstract
This document outlines the protocol used by the NetIQ Common
Agent as part of its NetIQ Common Agent Protocol (NCAP). This binary
protocol is used over standard TCP sockets and provides both
real-time event delivery and common RPC services to the NetIQ
Common Agent Framework. These messages may be encrypted via SSL
based on the handshake received during intial negotiation.
Messages consist primarily of a standardized header and a
variable-length body.
Both message header and content are stored in sender-native form,
pursuant to a reader-makes-right data flow.
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I. Introduction
The NetIQ Common Agent Protocol (NCAP) describes the format
and order of messages used in communication between the client and
server components in a NetIQ Common n-tiered system.
Based on the results of handshaking, these messages may be sent
in "clear text" mode (unencrypted) or encrypted via SSL. Once
a session has established a standard mode of transport encryption,
it stays constant for the lifetime of the session.
Once connection has been made and handshake mode successfully
completed, authentication may or may not take place, based on
user configuration and environmental requirements.
Established connections may then send and receive RPC requests/
responses. Asynchronous system update messages and live event
data may also be delivered to the client based on notification
subscriptions.
II. State Description and Transitions
Every connection will exist in one of the following states:
a) "UNINITIALIZED" (client only) - in this state, the client has
created a connection object, yet has not performed any operations
to initiate a server conversation. Transitions to "HANDSHAKING"
b) "HANDSHAKING" - in this state, the connection object is
negotiating session information, such as peer-endianness,
transport encryption/authentication required, etc. Transitions
to "CONNECTED" or "INVALIDATED".
c) "CONNECTED" - in this state, a valid session exists that has
satisfied both peers and wherein normal VIS-level requests and
responses may take place.
d) "INVALIDATED" - in this state, either the local or remote
peer has decided that this connection no longer may be used due
to the failure to negotiate a mutually-agreed upon standard,
the failure to establish trustworthiness of the peer, or
the client could not provide adequate credentials.
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III. Message Overview
Messages are structured collections of data with a well-defined
grammar used to communicate such concepts as: authentication,
provider requests, provider responses and event notifications.
Certain messages only occur under specific circumstances. For
example, SSL negotiations will only happen during the "HANDSHAKING"
phase; NCAP messages may happen in either "HANDSHAKING" or
"CONNECTED" modes.
IV. NCAP Messages
Messages used by the VIS Protocol are of the following generic
format.
[header]
[message-specific payload]
The header contains information such as the endian of the message,
information regarding which process/thread sent the message,
request order ID, message category and type, etc. The endian of
the message will be the same as that of the sender. Fields will
be converted to the local endian by the receiving process
("reader-makes-right"). The endian specifier in the header
is a single byte and obviously unaffected by this.
The payload immediately follows the header and contains flattened
data specific to the type of request or reply specified in the
header. This data is flattened via the standard VIS flattening/
unflattening methods. The payload, as with the header, is
flattened in the sender's endian. VIS takes the endian issues
into account when unflattening this data.
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Author's Address
Roger Huebner
NetIQ Corp.
Park Towers North
1233 West Loop South, Ste 1800
Houston, TX 77027
USA
Phone: (713) 418-5407
EMail: Roger.Huebner@netiq.com
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