This MIB Module models status, performance and failures of a protocol with the generic characteristics of signalling protocols used with IPsec and FC-SP protocols. Examples of such protocols include IKE, KINK, etc. This MIB views the common attributes of such protocols. Signaling protocols are also referred in this document as 'Control Protocols', since they perform session control. This MIB is an attempt to capture the generic aspects of the signaling activity. The protocol-specific aspects of a signaling protocol still need to be captured in a protocol-specific MIB (e.g., CISCO-IKE-FLOW-MIB, etc.). Acronyms The following acronyms are used in this document: IPsec: Secure IP Protocol VPN: Virtual Private Network ISAKMP: Internet Security Association and Key Exchange Protocol IKE: Internet Key Exchange Protocol SA: Security Association (ref: rfc2408). Phase 1 Tunnel: An ISAKMP SA can be regarded as representing a flow of ISAKMP/IKE traffic. Hence an ISAKMP is referred to as a 'Phase 1 Tunnel' in this document. Control Tunnel: Another term for a Phase 1 Tunnel. Phase 2 Tunnel: An instance of a non-ISAKMP SA bundle in which all the SA share the same proxy identifiers (IDii,IDir) protect the same stream of application traffic. Such an SA bundle is termed a 'Phase 2 Tunnel'. Note that a Phase 2 tunnel may comprise different SA bundles and different number of SA bundles at different times (due to key refresh). History of the MIB A precursor to this MIB was the IPsec Flow Monitor MIB, which combined the objects pertaining to IKE and IPsec (Phase-2) into a single MIB module. Furthermore, the MIB supported only one signaling protocol, IKEv1, in addition to manual keying. The MIB was written by Tivoli and implemented in IBM Nways routers in 1999. During late 1999, Cisco adopted the MIB and together with Tivoli publised the IPsec Flow Monitor MIB in IETF IPsec WG in draft-ietf-ipsec-flow-monitoring-mib-00.txt. In 2000, the MIB was Cisco-ized and implemented as CISCO-IPSEC-FLOW-MONITOR-MIB in IOS and VPN3000 platforms. With the evolution of IKEv2, the MIB was modified and presented to the IPsec WG again in May 2003 in draft-ietf-ipsec-flow-monitoring-mib-02.txt. With the emergence to multiple signaling protocols, it has further evolved to define separate set of MIB modules to instrument IPsec signaling alone. Thus, this MIB module is now the generic IPsec signaling MIB. Overview of MIB The MIB contains major groups of objects which are used to manage the generic aspects of IPsec signaling. These groups include a global statistics, control tunnel table, Peer association group, control tunnel history group, signaling failure group and notification group. The global statistics, tunnel table and peer association groups aid in the real-time monitoring of IPsec signaling activity. The History group is to aid applications that do trending analysis. The Failure group is to enable an operator to do troubleshooting and debugging. Further, counters are supported to aid detection of potential security violations. The notifications are modeled as generic IPsec control notifications and are parameterized by the identity of the specific signaling protocol which caused the notification to be issued.