RE: registration OIDs: do the values matter?

["Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <bwijnen@lucent.com>]

Inline

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Bierman [mailto:abierman@cisco.com]
> Sent: zondag 23 februari 2003 16:52
> To: Wijnen, Bert (Bert)
> Cc: C. M. Heard; Mreview (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: registration OIDs: do the values matter?
> 
> 
> At 11:19 AM 2/23/2003 +0100, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> >> >Indeed.  And I see a couple of assignments in that list that are
> >> >wrong and need to be corrected.  Specifically,
> >> >
> >> >SSPM-MIB:     sspmMIB               M-I     { mib-2 777 }
> >> >RAQMON-MIB:   raqmon                M-I     { mib-2 6889 }
> >> >
> >> >are listed in the corresponding I-Ds as
> >> >
> >> >SPM-MIB:      sspmMIB               M-I     { rmon 777 }
> >> >RAQMON-MIB:   raqmon                M-I     { rmon 6889 }
> >> 
> >> these MIB modules are under development and will be fixed soon.
> >> 
> >They should NEVER have had these numbers in. Insetaad they shoul do:
> >
> >> >SPM-MIB:      sspmMIB M-I     { rmon xxx } -- to be 
> assigned by Someone
> >> >RAQMON-MIB:   raqmon  M-I     { rmon xxx } -- to be 
> assigned by Someone
> 
> there's a practical problem with this approach -- this is illegal SMI.
> MIB compilers don't like it. That's why we use bogus numbers instead.
> I usually use 999999 to make it clear the number is bogus.  Other
> MIB authors don't seem to do this.
> 
Not good either. It may be a tidbit more obvious (ot MIB experts)
that a 99999 is probably just a placeholder. But the proper way is
to use something like xxxx or nnn or such.
Anyone who wants to compile and implement better need to go
thorugh some manual process so it is VERY CLEAR that they are
taking risks and better use non-existing OIDs.

> 
> >The plain assignment of arbitrary numbers is a BUG in the WG process.
> >
> >The "Someone" is the problem here. For WGs that do their own stuff,
> >it is very unclear to me how we keep control and avoid possible
> >bugs that turn out in conflicting (colliding) assignments.
> 
> The WG Chair uses the same process as IANA. They check a list of
> assigned numbers and give out the next unused number.  Just because
> the authors of the SSPM and RAQMON MIBs picked random numbers 
> doesn't mean this process can't work.  I will make sure from now on
> that RMON MIB authors use the correct number as soon as a draft
> gets a draft-ietf-rmonmib file name.
> 
This is still problematic in that you migth give out numbers to 
an WG draft, and it may never end up as RFC, and it may in fact get
incompatible (normally not allowed) changes to the revisions as
they move from one I-D revision to the next and so on.

Assignment should not happen before IESG approval.

Bert
> 
> >Bert 
> 
> Andy
> 
>