Re: Fwd: [ipv6mib] So, where were we?

[Margaret Wasserman <mrw@windriver.com>]

Hi All,

There have been some recent discussions with the IPv6 MIB design
team regarding the direction of our work on IPv6 MIBs that I
think would be best discussed on the full IPv6 and MIBs lists.

In particular, we have received input from two areas:

	(1) Folks who would like to see substantial changes
		to the RFC 2096 update (Forwarding Table MIB),
		to make it better reflect the structure of
		forwarding tables on current equipment, be more
		efficient to use, etc.
		
	(2) The authors of a new TCP-related MIB in the transport
		area who would like to see their changes merged
		with the new TCP MIB under development in IPv6.

		This work has been published as:

		draft-ietf-tsvwg-tcp-mib-extension-XX.txt

This whole discussion begs the question of what direction we want
to take with our IP version-independent MIBs, and perhaps raises
a question of how/where this work should be undertaken.

From my perspective, there are two reasonable choices:

	(1) Update the current IPv4 TCP, UDP, IP and Forwarding
		Table MIBs to be version-independent (i.e. add IPv6).

		In this choice, we would make as few changes
		to those MIBs as possible, in attempt to make
		the implementation of the new version-independent
		MIBs as easy as possible for folks who are
		adding IPv6 to an existing stack.

		This is the work that we originally started in
		the IPv6 WG, based on the fact that the main
		difference in these MIBs would be a transition
		from IPv4 -> IPv4/IPv6, and we have several
		IPv6 WG drafts out that reflect this direction.

	(2) Develop new MIBs for TCP, UDP, IP and Forwarding
		that reflect the state-of-the-art in each area.

		This choice involves more work, and may take
		longer to be adopted, due to larger changes
		from IPv4 to the IPv4/IPv6 versions.

		Also, it is pretty clear to me that the IPv6
		WG is not the right place to develop a new,
		substantially different version of the TCP
		or UDP MIBs.  It is also questionable whether
		a major update to the IP and routing MIBs
		should be done in IPv6, or in a separate
		IPv4/IPv6 MIBs group.

It is possible that we could do a combined version of these
two choices:

	- The IPv6 WG does the minimal updates to make the
		current IPv4 MIBs version-independent.
	- State-of-the-art MIBs are developed in other areas
		and groups, as appropriate.

What do you folks think?

Margaret