FW: DS MIB - please review this list...

["Durham, David" <david.durham@intel.com>]

Forwarding this from mibs because SMIng came up. This group should pay
particular attention to past pain (particularly around addresses) so we are
not doomed to repeat it in the future.
-Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Baker [mailto:fred@cisco.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2001 7:40 AM
Subject: RE: DS MIB - please review this list...


At 04:20 PM 2/28/2001 +0100, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
>I strongly recommend that we go with the rules (the MUSTs)
>as specified in RFC2851.

I have changed the next dsmib draft accordingly

>However, if you really do not want to go with those
>rules... then we should have a debate on the mibs mailing list
>to get the rules changed and specify the situations in which
>such rules may be ignored.

I have attempted to have that debate. Sound computer science does not 
appear to be relevant. What I got back incorporated a distinct 
non-understanding of the format and construction of IP headers, and used as 
a centerpiece of its logic "is this so terrible?". I was hoping for an 
actual discussion; that debate didn't happen.

But it pointed out (again) the obvious flaw in the SMI that disallowed the 
use of NetworkAddress a decade ago. IPv6 MIBs would have been a slam-dunk 
if we could have simply added an IPv6 address to NetworkAddress and had 
IPv6 support bloom all over the MIB, rather than having to redo each and 
every MIB individually. What this provides is a poor man's CHOICE. I would 
strongly urge that SMIng fix that once and for all.