Re: MIB topic in draft-ietf-ipv6-node-requirements-07.txt

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003, Randy Presuhn wrote:
>[Bert Wijnen wrote:]
> > If someone sees an issue, please speak up IMMEDIATELY
> >
> >
> > 10.1 Management Information Base Modules (MIBs)
> >
> >    The following two MIBs SHOULD be supported by nodes that support an
> >    SNMP agent.
> >
> > 10.1.1  IP Forwarding Table MIB
> >
> >    IP Forwarding Table MIB [RFC-2096BIS] SHOULD be supported by nodes
> >    that support an SNMP agent.
> 
> If that system actually is capable of IP forwarding.  If it is not, then
> it seems odd to recommend supporting the MIB.

The IP Forwarding Table MIB is useful even in hosts that don't
forward packets.  Such a host has to have a route cache, and the
forwarding table MIB provides a means to make the route cache
visible via the network management interface.

> >    Support for this MIB does not imply that IPv4 or IPv4 specific
> >    portions of this MIB be supported.
> 
> I object.  This directly contradicts the conformance material in
> RFC 2096bis. If we're going to talk about supporting a MIB by
> only implementing a subset of the objects, then that MIB module
> should have appropriate conformance material and this document
> should specify the appropriate MODULE-COMPLIANCE labels.

I don't understand the objection.  The MIB module in question is (or
should be) the one in draft-ietf-ipv6-rfc2096-update-05.txt.  That
module has two current compliance statements,
ipForwardFullCompliance and ipForwardReadOnlyCompliance, neither of
which requires support for any IPv4-specific portions of the MIB
module.  They require only support for version-neutral objects.  
All of the IPv4-specific objects have been deprecated, and so have
the compliance statements which require them. What's the problem?

> > 10.1.2 Management Information Base for the Internet Protocol (IP)
> >
> >    IP MIB [RFC-2011BIS] SHOULD be supported by nodes that support an
> >    SNMP agent.
> >
> >    Support for this MIB does not imply that IPv4 or IPv4 specific
> >    portions of this MIB be supported.
> 
> Ditto.

I believe that the same can be said of 2011bis, but I don't know
that document as well as 2096bis.

//cmh