I'm not wild about the binary either, but SMIv3 was chosen back in the days when Moore's Law was just taking off. I think an xml based structure over a reliable TLS or authenticated/encrypted counterpart would be great!
The advantage I get with a PIB is a COPS protocol. The protocol informs me if my transaction succeeded, or not. It enforces a single connection between the client-server so I know the origin of the updates and I get the nice side-effect of concurrency control. It gives me a feedback mechanism on how the policy is doing if I so desire it.
-Diana
-----Original Message-----
From: Randy Bush [mailto:randy@psg.com]
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 8:13 AM
To: rap@ops.ietf.org; diffserv@ietf.org
Cc: ipsec-policy@vpnc.org
Subject: why i should like pibs
wearing my iesg hat but being just a stupid operator, i am trying to
understand the pib/mib controversy. fyi, i currently use snmp heavily
for monitoring devices on my network. i configure using large db-driven
code and spew text-based cli to the devices.
let's assume i want to take the leap to a binary, as opposed to textual,
configuration language. i.e. for some reason(s) [which we will PLEASE
NOT discuss here] i decide to move from pushing text-based cli configs
out to pushing a binary format.
hence, i would have to push my vendors to implement snmp/cops writes for
all configuration aspects of all devices. this would be big cost for
both me and for my vendors.
why would cops/pibs be significantly better (remember it has to replace
my current investment, so it can not be 'just as good') than snmp/mibs?
randy