Re: MIB

[Keith McCloghrie <kzm@cisco.com>]

> >See I come from an agent/subagent environment. Those people who implement
> >a MIB, they do not always know on which plaforms together with which version
> >of an SNMP agent they get installed/deployed. And in fact, one of the strong
> >motivators for sub-agent technology (agentX on the stds track, but various
> >other technologies as well) is the fact that a MIB implementer does not
> >need to worry about the security mechanisms of the SNMP protocol itself.
> 
> That is a useful clarification.  Thanks.
> 
> IMHO, it sounds like the interface between the sub-agent and the master
> agent needs to be enhanced so the sub-agent has knowledge of whether
> it is running on SNMPv1 or SNMPv3.  Such knowledge has impact on other
> things (e.g. 64-bit counters) unrelated to security.
 
On the contrary, what you're asking for is not supported by the SNMP
architecture.  SNMP supports proxy agents, and one of the functions of
proxy agents is to convert between SNMPv1 and SNMPv3.  So, an SNMPv1
request may well get converted to an SNMPv3 request before arriving at
the agent where the OSPF instrumentation is.

Keith.