Network Monitoring Session Description

Network Monitoring is a complex distributed activity: we distinguish agents that issue requests and use of the results, other that operate the monitoring activity and produce observations, glued together by other agents that are in charge of routing requests and results. We illustrate a comprehensive view of a such architecture, taking into account scalability and security requirements, concentrating on the definition of the information exchanged between such agents. We address scalability by introducing monitoring sessions activated on demand, with a declared preference for passive monitoring tools, and security by enforcing authenticated communications at every step. A scalable protocol for public key diffusion is introduced in a companion paper