Re: Methods in the NIM requirements

[Jon Saperia <saperia@mediaone.net>]

on 05/04/2000 1:32 AM, Keith McCloghrie at kzm@cisco.com wrote:

> The only way that standard MIBs could get close to 100% coverage would
> be for all vendors' products to be exactly the same.  Except for "clone"
> markets, it is the nature of business that vendors try to differentiate
> their products by making them different.  The purpose of standard
> protocols is to make different products interoperate, not to make all
> products the same.  So, while not having 100% coverage does make it harder
> to write management applications, it's always going to be like that,
> and the desires of network/policy management is not going to change it.
> 
> Keith.

In many respects, I agree with a lot of what you say. As is usually the
case, these things are a matter of degree. Vendors will always want to
differentiate themselves with features and functions that will need to be
visible for monitoring and control that will extend the standards. The
current state of the industry is far from this. There are gratuitous changes
to existing specification and specifications that are far less complete than
they could be (while still allowing for vendor differentiation). This by the
way is not a problem unique to the area of management. I agree with your
point that the 'purpose [a purpose] of standard protocols is to make
different products interoperate'. The fact is that in the management area
and in many others from a practical perspective they do not. There is a lot
more to interoperation that the format of a packet as you know.

/jon