Subject: RE: draft-ietf-hubmib-etherif-mib-05.txt

From: Andrew Smith <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 16:17:11 -0700

John,

Sounds like you are proposing quite a radical re-write of the MAU MIB
here: do you have a proposal?

Andrew

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	John Flick [SMTP:[email-masked]]
> Sent:	Wednesday, May 20, 1998 4:01 PM
> To:	Andrew Smith
> Cc:	[email-masked]
> Subject:	RE: draft-ietf-hubmib-etherif-mib-05.txt
> 
> 
> The feedback I have heard from developers, both of apps and agents, is
> 
> that they hate the current scheme in the MAU MIB.  I guess I'm saying
> that we need to be open to feedback from implementors if we expect to
> see apps actually use these MIBs.  Otherwise, we wind up with vendors
> continuing to do their management and config thru private MIBs, only
> usable by their own apps.
> 
> John

---

From: John Flick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 May 1998 17:32:43 -0700 (PDT)

> here: do you have a proposal?

I would rather avoid a radical rewrite.  (Brian's suggestions for
ifMauType and ifMauTypeList were a bit more radical.)  I would think
my ideal would be adding a read-only duplex-mode object to ifXTable,
and adding a settable config object, and possibly a cabability object,
to the Ethernet MIB.  The config object would be an enumeration to
allow force half-duplex, force full-duplex, or negotiate to either.
This wouldn't necessarily have to change the MAU MIB, as long as we
were clear how sets to the MAU MIB objects and the above config object 
interact.  The rationale for having the status object in IF-MIB and
the config object in the Ethernet MIB is that duplex mode is a pretty
generic concept, whereas not many media types can change between
half-duplex and full-duplex on the fly.  A WAN interface would just
always say full-duplex for its duplex mode.  An interface that has no
concept of duplex (like propVirtual or softwareLoopback), would report 
"other".

As a data point, it seems like several vendors have added a duplex
config object to their private MIBs.  This is easier to understand
than having to twiddle the ifMauAutoNegCapAdvertised to change duplex
for auto-negotiating interfaces, but change ifMauDefaultType for
non-auto-negotiating interfaces or interfaces where auto-negotiation
has been disabled.

By the way, I would also like to see something similar for PAUSE -
i.e. an easy way to determine what mode it is in now, and an easy way
to turn it off.

John