Subject: [MIB-DOCTORS] Doubt on naming convention

From: Glenn Mansfield Keeni <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 16:59:58 +0900

Hi,
Is there a rule or a convention for naming the MIB
definitions in the DEFINITIONS clause below?

     XXXXXX-YYYYY-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN

More specifically does it have to
be all capitals?
Is
     Multicast-VPN-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN
OK ?

Thanks,
Glenn

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From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 10:20:56 +0200

>     Multicast-VPN-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN

Technically, Multicast-VPN-MIB is a legal name. Practically speaking,
I count ~300 MIB modules in RFCs that have no lowercase characters in
their module name and ~15 MIB modules in RFCs that have a lowercase
character in their module name. And out of these, a common usage of
lowercase letters is to indicate a version number, e.g. NTPv4-MIB,
RIPv2-MIB, SNMPv2-CONF, SNMPv2-MIB, SNMPv2-SMI, SNMPv2-TC, SNMPv2-TM,
SNMPv2-USEC-MIB. And the remaining modules tend to be rather old
modules (or modules with a long history).

RFC 4181 (BCP 111) says in Appendix C:

   - The module name should be of the form XXX-MIB (or XXX-TC-MIB for a
     module with TCs only), where XXX is a unique prefix (usually all
     caps with hyphens for separators) that is not used by any existing
     module.

So the common convention is to all caps with hyphens for separators.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <https://www.jacobs-university.de/>

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From: Glenn Mansfield Keeni <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 17:34:31 +0900

Juergen,
       Thanks. That was helpful.
Glenn