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Re: DS MIB - please review this list...


>>>>> Fred Baker writes:

Fred> A generic manager doesn't know that the type of the address
Fred> object is InetAddress apart from having read a MIB in; it
Fred> otherwise looks like an OCTET STRING. It therefore does not know
Fred> to look at the object numerically before in order to get the
Fred> type, apart from having read in a MIB.

If you don't have MIB knowledge, than you are out of luck.

Fred> If it can read in a MIB, it can find the InetAddressType in the
Fred> entry and associate it with all of the InetAddress objects in
Fred> the entry.

If you have multiple addresses and address types in a single
conceptual row, then picking the right combination can become tricky
unless you have precise rules. RFC provides rules which are simple to
follow and which allow code generators or MIB aware browsers to do the
right thing without any guess-work. The price for this is in some
cases an additional column or an additional subid in the instance
identifier. I believe the price is acceptable for the benefits we get
of clarity, simplicity and hopefully more consistent MIBs.

BTW, are you really absolutely sure that the two addresses in the
filer will never ever be of different types? Did you think through all
the various transition mechanisms and the various "any" addresses that
are possible? Perhaps the shortcut optimization will come back as a
boomerang after a while?

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder      Technical University Braunschweig
<schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>  Dept. Operating Systems & Computer Networks
Phone: +49 531 391 3289    Bueltenweg 74/75, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
Fax:   +49 531 391 5936    <URL:http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/~schoenw/>