Connectors and Protocol Adaptors

The HTML protocol adaptor, the HTTP/SSL connector and the HTTP/TCP connector all provide login/password authentication. In this authentication scheme, the client object and the server object contain authentication information. The server side object contains an array of objects that contains authentication information for all known clients. When a client attempts to login, the login/password object that it sends is compared with the array to see whether the client is in the list of permitted clients. If the list of permitted clients is null, no client authentication is performed by the protocol adaptor; access is granted to all clients.

HTML

The HTML protocol adaptor is an HTML server that enables web browsers to access a Java Dynamic Management Kit agent through the HTTP communications protocol. When an HTML protocol adaptor is instantiated, it creates a TCP/IP socket and waits for incoming requests. By default, the HTML adaptor listens for incoming requests on port 8082. The HTML protocol adaptor provides login/password authentication.

The HTML protocol adaptor is provided as a tool for debugging and speeding up the development of agents. As such, it has certain limitations; for example it does not display complex types or multi-dimensional arrays.

Security on the manager side is handled by the HTML browser. On the server side, you need to provide a list of agents for which you want to provide security for, in order for those agents to be run securely.

HTTP/SSL

The HTTP/SSL connector enables Java managers to access a Java Dynamic Management Kit agent using HTTP over SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). SSL security is implemented in Java 2. It also allows these management applications to access an agent across proxy servers. By default, the HTTP/SSL connector listens for incoming requests on port 8084. The HTTP/SSL connector provides login/password authentication based on 'CRAM-MD5' (Challenge-Response Authentication Mechanism using MD5). The HTTP/SSL adaptor server requires client authentication by default.

The behavior of the HTTP/SSL connector is governed by the particular SSL implementation used in your applications. The cipher suites that are enabled are the defaults of the SSL implementation. The SSL implementation must be compliant with the SSL Standard Extension API.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit 4.1 is compliant with the Java Secure Socket Extension 1.0 (JSSE) API. JSSE provides an API framework and reference implementation for security protocols.

HTTP/TCP

The HTTP/TCP connector enables Java managers to access a Java Dynamic Management Kit agent using HTTP over a TCP/IP connection. It also allows these management applications to access an agent across proxy servers. By default, the HTTP/TCP adaptor listens for incoming requests on port 8081. The HTTP/TCP connector provides login/password authentication.