Re: Help/guidance on L2TPv3 MIB draft

[Steve Moulton <moulton@snmp.com>]

On Sunday, September 29 2002, "Natale, Robert C (Bob)" <bnatale@lucent.com> wro
te:

> At 8/19/2002:08:26 PM, Jed Lau <jedlau@cisco.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jed,
> 
> Please review this MIB for compatibility with the
> IETF standard SNMP agent extensibility protocol,
> AgentX (RFC2741...and RFC2742 can also give you
> some additional insight into AgentX operations).
> 
> The fundamental issue is that scalar objects are
> potentially problematic for AgentX. They should be
> avoided by putting them into a table indexed by
> some form of "AgentEntityID" object (an exercise
> left to the implementer for now :-().
> 
> Note that the issue of AgentX compatibility for
> MIB writers will be addressed in a forthcoming
> Internet Draft that I will submit...perhaps with
> an extended applicability statement for AgentX
> (Sections 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4 of RFC2741 do a good
> job of the basics already)...for consideration by
> the relevant IETF WGs. My hope is that consideration
> of this Draft will lead to adding a statement or two
> to the standard "SNMP Framework" boilerplate to
> document these requirements for MIB writers.
> 
> Guidance from Bert re where to discuss this
> issue -- AgentX compatibility guidelines for
> SNMP MIBs -- will be appreciated. (The AgentX
> e-mail list is still operative, but the WG is
> closed pending further work when its time to
> move to Full Standard status.)

Perhaps AgentX could receive some attention to fix
this shortcoming, rather than force MIB writers to
use artificial constraints that are not a part
of, and rather unnatural to, SNMP.  This kind of
artificial constraint (Andy might say CLR) does 
little other than impede SNMP (and SNMPv3) acceptance.

        - Steve
---
Steve Moulton        SNMP Research, Inc            voice: +1 865 573 1434
Sr Software Engineer 3001 Kimberlin Heights Rd.    fax: +1 865 573 9197
moulton@snmp.com     Knoxville, TN 37920-9716 USA  http://www.snmp.com