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RE: Telechat agenda topic: Does an IANA maintained MIB require an RFC?



--On onsdag, februar 19, 2003 22:54:23 -0800 Bill Fenner <fenner@research.att.com> wrote:



If I wasn't aware of what's happening, [publishing the IANA-maintained
MIB only on the IANA web page and not as an RFC] would violate my
principle  of least surprise - having discussed a MIB for years, the RFC
suddenly pops  out with no MIB in it.



On the other hand, I'm looking for the IANAifType-MIB -- is
it better for me to find RFC 1573 with values 1-54 defined,
or the version on the IANA web page with values 1-220?




If I'm on the Stockholm-Bangkok flight, and looking for the style of 
interface MIB definition, or what the "sip" interface value means (it's 
SMDS :-), it's certainly better for me to find RFC 1573 in my 
RFC-archive-copy than to wait for the plane to land and look for the next 
available timeslot with network access to do the work.



OTOH, if I'm looking for value 77 (lapd), RFC 1573 will be useless to me.

So I'd say "it varies".




Besides, IANA web pages don't (yet) have the tradition of immutability
and  wide availability that the RFC series has.



The non-immutability is exactly the point of having the IANA maintain it.




note: at the moment I can't find "the MIB repository" at 
http://www.iana.org/ or ftp://ftp.iana.org/.... I found the 
"ianaiftype-mib" file in the "assigments" page. There is no "mib" directory.



some aspects shouldn't be mutable.



                    Harald