Grant Proposal by Ilya Etingof, independent software engineer To Grant Committee at PSF SUMMARY I'm seeking $1,500 to fund the implementation of SNMPv3 (Simple Network Management Protocol version 3) protocol as a Python library module. Once implemented, this software would facilitate network management tools development in Python programming language. Contact: Ilya Etingof, Russia web: http://pysnmp.sf.net e-mail: ilya@glas.net A. OBJECTIVE The SNMP technology [1] is widely used for the purposes of computer network management [2], such as controlling and monitoring various network devices. The initial SNMP protocol specification dates back to late 80's. Since then, it evolves though several versions, mostly aiming at stronger security and better performance. The most current specification is SNMPv3 [3]. There're already several SNMP protocol implementations available for Python, though, not one of them offers both SNMP version 3 support and is written entirely in Python (e.g. not a wrapper). Among existing implementations, there's my hobby project -- PySNMP [4], which already implements SNMPv1 and v2c as a set of Python modules. It's anticipated, that having pure-Python SNMPv3 services would promote Python language as a primary tool for various network management applications development. Similar facilities has been implemented for Java. [5] This grant proposal aims at implementing the following SNMPv3 services for Python: * Python library package implementing multi-protocol SNMP engine [6] * Programmer's manual for the SNMP engine API * Basic command-line SNMP tools (such as snmpwalk and others [7]) implemented on top of the SNMP engine library All the productions will be freely available to the Python community in source form. B. FUNDING RATIONALE The funding is needed to let me temporarily suspend some of my paid jobs and concentrate on implementing SNMPv3 services for Python. C. DELIVERY PLAN May 2005: multi-protocol SNMP engine package June 2005: SNMP tools August 2005: SNMP engine API documentation D. PAYMENT PLAN It would be nice to have about a half of the requested sum in advance to let the work begin. REFERENCES [1] Simple Network Management Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_network_management_protocol [2] Network management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_management [3] SNMPv3 http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/projects/snmpv3/ [4] Python SNMP framework http://pysnmp.sf.net [5] The Object Oriented SNMP API for Java http://www.snmp4j.org/ [6] SNMP entity architecture http://rfc.net/rfc3412.html#s2. [7] De-facto standard tools to manage SNMP agents http://www.net-snmp.org/tutorial-5/commands/