Subject: Totals are counters

From: "David T. Perkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 23:33:56 -0700

Hi,

The object alarmActiveStatsTotalActive should be a counter and
not a Gauge32. Note that the following objects are correctly
specified as counters:
    ituAlarmActiveStatsIndeterminateTotal
    ituAlarmActiveStatsCriticalTotal     
    ituAlarmActiveStatsMajorTotal        
    ituAlarmActiveStatsMinorTotal        
    ituAlarmActiveStatsWarningTotal      

Regards,
/david t. perkins

---

From: Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 12:11:52 -0700 (PDT)

Hi -

> Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
> From: "Sharon Chisholm" <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Totals are counters
> Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 09:58:33 -0400
...
> The Definitions:
> 
>           -- this wraps
>           Counter32 ::=
>               [APPLICATION 1]
>                   IMPLICIT INTEGER (0..4294967295)
> 
>           -- this doesn't wrap
>           Gauge32 ::=
>               [APPLICATION 2]
>                   IMPLICIT INTEGER (0..4294967295)

It's misleading to quote just this without also including RFC 2578
sections 7.1.6 and 7.1.7 which give the full story.

> Our Statistics:
> 
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsIndeterminateCurrent Gauge32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsCriticalCurrent      Gauge32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsMajorCurrent         Gauge32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsMinorCurrent         Gauge32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsWarningCurrent       Gauge32,	
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsIndeterminateTotal   Counter32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsCriticalTotal        Counter32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsMajorTotal           Counter32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsMinorTotal           Counter32,
>     ituAlarmActiveStatsWarningTotal         Counter32

This is as it should be.

> Do I really want my current counts to wrap?  Is it better 
> falsely show my current major alarm count to be 4294967295
> or 3?
...

The "current" ones, since they can go up or down, should
be Gauges.  The "total" ones, since they must be able to
eventually wrap to support long-term tracking, should be
Counters.  There's no "falsely" about it.  Management software
that's reporting counter values is supposed to know about RFC
2578 section 7.1.6.  To avoid confusing application developers
that haven't read the SMI, perhaps "Total" could be changed
to "Cumulative" or simply "s".

 ------------------------------------------------------
 Randy Presuhn          BMC Software, Inc.  1-3141
 [email-masked]  2141 North First Street
 Tel: +1 408 546-1006   San José, California 95131  USA
 ------------------------------------------------------
 My opinions and BMC's are independent variables.
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