RE: LLDP port ids

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

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> To make the scope of the discussion more clear - the choice in
> the discussion that we are having with the LLDP folks is between
> ifAlias and ifName as an unique identifier for topology
> connections. I agree with you that it is impossible for these
> requirements to be met by ifAlias unless the user (via
> management software) makes them happen. As you say, the
> user/management software must assign a unique ID to ifAlias when
> a link layer connection is nailed up, and must not change that
> ID for as long as the link layer connection persists. However,
> in my opinion ifAlias seems a better choice than using ifName,
> which has by definition a semantics limited to device context,
> and does not allow to be modified by SNMP MIB operations.

Yes, I understood that, and I agree:  ifName is unsuitable for this
purpose, and ifAlias is a much better choice.  The concern that I
wanted to raise is that there is a loophole in the definition of
ifAlias that allows an agent to refuse writes and always return a
zero-length string.  That could be a problem, depending on what
fielded agents actually do.

Mike