Subject: unique naming without ifName

From: "Carl W. Kalbfleisch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 17:23:50 -0600

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ifmib-ifmib2-01.txt describes
the use of a new attribute ifName to work around the lack of unique naming
of interfaces. If a management application needs to provide unique naming
and does not want to suffer from the legacy problems of changing ifIndex,
what is considered the best practice? It would seem like the application
could do the following in order:

1) use ifName if it exists
2) use ifDescr if it is unique
3) use some other scheme

Is there a best practice for (3) except to use ifIndex?

Carl

--
Carl W. Kalbfleisch
Manager NMS Development
www.verio.net

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From: Jon Saperia <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 07:59:04 -0500

To the best of what I know, there is not consistent answer for your 'use
some other scheme'.  In fact different pieces of management software
have used different combinations based on a number of factors in the
past.  Some that I am aware of include mac address (when that is
available) in combination with other items. Many times private MIB
objects can also be use. If the object gives information about chassis
or slot number that can also be helpful in reducing ambiguity about if
an interface has changed or not. Previous practices which used things
like IP address are no longer helpful in DHCP type of environments.

/jon

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From: "Sandra C. Durham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 12:21:51 -0800

i rather thought ifAlias was proposed as the unique handle.  Note that 
ifName is not unique to an interface, as is shown in the example given in 
rfc2233, and this draft.

The one problem w/ ifAlias is it is not automagically populated.  So the 
nms has to write to this object.  It is then supposed to remain over a 
reboot (and thus be a constant unique way to identify the interface).

sandra

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From: "David Fowler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 14:58:42 -0500

Nothing in the definition of ifAlias requires it to be unique, although the
discussion of the object in the front of the MIB suggests that this is a
possible constraint an NMS may apply to values written to ifAlias.  I would
not expect use of ifAlias for unique naming to be a common practice.

Is anyone on the list current using ifAlias as a unique identifier?

David

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
> Behalf Of Sandra C. Durham
> Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 3:22 PM
> To: Carl W. Kalbfleisch; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: unique naming without ifName
>
>