Subject: ifCounterDiscontinuityGroup question

From: Gary Hanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 11:16:57 -0700 (PDT)

Curiosity seekers,

Does anybody know why ifCounterDiscontinuityGroup was listed in RFC
2233 as a mandatory group?

Given that the group contains only the ifCounterDiscontinuityTime
object, and given that there are no Counter32 or Counter64 objects
included in the ifGeneralInformationGroup, it seems odd that this
object that relates only to Counter32 and Counter64 objects would
be considered mandatory for all ifTable entries.

Anybody know the answer to this one?

Regards,
Gary

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From: Keith McCloghrie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 13:41:25 -0700 (PDT)

> 2233 as a mandatory group?

To encourage implementation.

There are very few devices (probably none) which legimately have every
interface supporting only the ifGeneralInformationGroup.  For those
that have at least one ifEntry with counters, support for the
ifCounterDiscontinuityTime really is necessary.  It's easy for such
an implementation to support ifCounterDiscontinuityTime for interfaces
which don't have discontinuities: always return zero.

I don't think this has ever been discussed by the WG previously.  When
the WG decided to add ifCounterDiscontinuityTime, the editor (me) was
chartered to update the document.  In doing so, I obviously had to make
a decision of whether ifCounterDiscontinuityGroup should be mandatory
or not.  You see what I decided, and no one in the WG commented when
the WG reviewed the updates I made.

Keith.