Re: MIB module numbering for TBD MIB roots

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

>>>>> Andy Bierman writes:

Andy> I just noticed that the RAQMON MIB proposal to the RMONMIB WG is
Andy> rooted at { mib-2 6889 }. This is a problem.

Andy> I think there should be a "well-known" MIB root assignment to
Andy> indicate an unassigned MIB root.  (NOT under mib-2 !!)
Andy> Something that will pass MIB compilers but other MIB development
Andy> tools can flag as an error. At a minimum, dummy MIB roots must
Andy> not be assigned in the same sub-tree as real MIB objects.

Using mib-2 has the advantage that you do not need to update imports
if the final number is assigned. I think we can do several things:

(a) Encourage people to use things like { mib-2 0 } for work in
    progress and let compiler writers issue warnings for things like
    this.

(b) Encourage people to use things like { mib-2 xxx } which breaks
    SMI rules and thus won't work with most tools. Encourage syntax
    checker writers to accept constructs like this with a warning.
    (This is more work for compiler writers as this usually implies
    changes to the underlying grammar.)

(c) Define subtrees where you can temporarily and easily root MIB
    trees under development. We more or less have such branches, but
    not many people are using them and if they do, they might run into
    problems because people implement drafts under these trees.

I think (a) is the cheapest of these proposals. In fact, we would
probably implement (b) in libsmi by mapping xxx to 0 anyway.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder      University of Osnabrueck
<schoenw@inf.uos.de>       Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science
Phone: +49 541 969 2483    Albrechtstr. 28, 49069 Osnabrueck, Germany
Fax:   +49 541 969 2770    <http://www.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/>