Subject: Fwd: SONET MIB

From: Kaj Tesink <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 15:39:19 -0400

hi list, any opinions on this?

kaj

>X-Station-Sent-From: joker.bellcore.com
>Date: Thu, 9 Apr 98 07:50:14 CDT
>From: [email-masked] (Dennis Totin)
>To: [email-masked]
>Subject: SONET MIB
>
>
>Hello,
>
>  Sorry to bother you, but I saw your email address as a contact person for
>the SONET MIB.  I'm relatively new to MIB design and I wanted to get your
>opinion on something.
>
>  The variable sonetMediumType is defined as a read-only enumerated value,
>taking on one of the values (sonet or sdh). (I'm sure you already knew
>that).
>
>  My question is:  If developing a product where a single card has the 
>capability to be provisioned as either SONET or SDH, would it be against
>the SNMP "protocol" to redefine this MIB variable as read-write in order
>to serve as the "provisioning point" for SONET/SDH selection?
>
>  Along the same lines, I had the same question about some of the other
>variables in the sonetMediumEntry table (sonetMediumLineCoding, sonetMediumLineType,
>and sonetMediumCircuitIdentifier).  I'm also confused about these variables
>because in both the DS1 and DS3 MIB, they are read-write.
>
>Thank you for your time,
>
>Dennis Totin
>ADC Telecommunications
> 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/                                                                      _/
_/  Kaj Tesink                                                          _/
_/  Bellcore                                                            _/
_/  Business Internet Professional Services  vmail (732) 758-5254       _/
_/  331 Newman Springs Rd.                   email [email-masked]  _/
_/  Red Bank, NJ 07701                     faxmail (732) 758-2269       _/
_/                                                                      _/
_/  * NOTE AREA CODE CHANGE (908) --> (732) EFFECTIVE JUNE 1, 1997 *    _/
_/                                                                      _/
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

---

From: Gary Hanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 14:58:17 -0700 (PDT)

Kaj,

I share Dennis' confusion about why these configuration-oriented
objects in the sonetMediumTable were not made read-write in the
first place.  Given the willingness to evolve at least one of
these (sonetMediumCircuitIdentifier) from read-only to read-write,
I would think that it is not much worse to evolve the others from
read-only to read-write, as long as a MIN-ACCESS clause be added
to allow read-only implementations to remain compliant.

For clarity, the objects that are also deserving of evolution to
read-write include the following:
- sonetMediumType
- sonetMediumLineCoding

I admit that seeing all of these objects as read-only was the main
reason why we decided to NOT implement the SONET-MIB in one of our
products.  If these objects were made read-write, we would rethink
our earlier decision, and consider using the MIB.

If we are all going to go to MIB prison for 10 yrs hard time on the
sonetMediumCircuitIdentifier offense, what harm is there is serving
multiple sentences for the other objects (as long as they are all
served concurrently :-)?

I, for one, believe that the SNMP community is making life harder
for itself when it regards the initial MAX-ACCESS definition of a
configuration-oriented object that "could" be desired to be written
in some context as an error that can ONLY be fixable by deprecating
the object and adding a new object that is read-write.  There seem
to be no victims to the crime of evolving such objects to be read-
write, since agents that support them as read-only would not be
REQUIRED to start supporting them as read-write.  In fact, there
seems to be benefits to allowing such evolution, since the act of
deprecating and eventually obsoleting such objects would render
existing agents to be non-compliant, whereas evolving such objects
to be read-write would make everyone happy (except those who may be
simply unable to find happiness :-).

Anyway, those are my two cents on this one.

Regards,
Gary

---

From: Peter Jones <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 10:09:44 +0800

Kaj,

I'd go with gary on this one.

> > >because in both the DS1 and DS3 MIB, they are read-write.

regards
peter jones

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Peter Jones                           Atmosphere Networks
Manager of Software Development       4th Floor, Balcroft Building
                                      Garden Office Park
                                      345 Harborne Street
                                      Osborne Park WA 6017, Australia
Direct: +61 (8) 9443 0105             Main: +61 (8) 9443 0100
                                      Fax:  +61 (8) 9443 6610
mailto:[email-masked]        http://www.atmospherenet.com
_______________________________________________________________________