Re: 32-bit and 64-bit counters

[Dinakaran Joseph <dinakar@us.ibm.com>]

>> One of the things that complicate this situation
further, is the
>> fact that there are still a lot of SNMPv1 managers in the field.
>> They will not be able to understand Counter64 objects. So can
it
>> be assumed that standard mibs do not have to worry about them
?

>That has happened a long time ago.  For an example see:

>Baker, F., Chan, K. and A. Smith, Management Information Base for
>the Differentiated Services Architecture, RFC 3289, May 2002.

Thanks for this reference. What is confusing is that
some MIBs, like the one you mention above, use just Counter64 objects but
there are other MIBs which use a high capacity counter (Counter64) in addition
to a regular counter (Counter32) for the same object. I did not go through
the whole list of MIBs but even some of the recently published ones seem
to be having two types of counters like the ones below.

3371 Layer Two Tunneling Protocol "L2TP"
Management Information Base.
     E. Caves, P. Calhoun, R. Wheeler. August 2002. (Format:
TXT=139974
     bytes) (Status: PROPOSED STANDARD)

3812 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Traffic
Engineering (TE)
     Management Information Base (MIB). C. Srinivasan, A. Viswanathan,
T.
     Nadeau. June 2004. (Format: TXT=136475 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED
     STANDARD)

3813 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label Switching Router (LSR)
     Management Information Base (MIB). C. Srinivasan, A. Viswanathan,
T.
     Nadeau. June 2004. (Format: TXT=116120 bytes) (Status: PROPOSED
     STANDARD)

It might be good if the  "Guidelines
for Authors and Reviewers of MIB Documents"
 can specify which of the above two options is recommended or under
what circumstances each of these options can be used.

Thanks,
Dinakaran.