RE: [MIB-DOCTORS] RE: [AAA-DOCTORS] Enterprise codes - three or fouroctets

["David B Harrington" <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

According to www.iana.org, the defining document for ENTERPRISE is
RFC2578. I believe this is the updated defining document; the original
appears to be RFC1065 (Structure and Identification of Management
Information for TCP/IP-based internets). 

Each enterprise is assigned a subtree:
"For example, if the
   "Flintstones, Inc."  enterprise produced networking subsystems,
then
   they could request a node under the enterprises subtree from the
   Assigned Numbers authority."

A node is represented in SMI as a sub-identifier.
According to RFC2578, a sub-identifier has a value from 0..2^32-1
(4294967295 decimal). 

This would argue for a 32-bit field size, wouldn't it?

dbh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Romascanu, Dan (Dan) [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 7:33 PM
> To: Wijnen, Bert (Bert); OPS Area
> Cc: [e-mail]; MIB Doctors (E-mail)
> Subject: [MIB-DOCTORS] RE: [AAA-DOCTORS] Enterprise codes - 
> three or fouroctets
> 
> Bert,
> 
> The fact that you mentioned '(older) protocols' means that 
> your opinion
> is that we should advise that new IETF documents use only the 32-bit
> values? There is no such  guidance now and people rather use
existing
> protocols as reference, so we may need to issue such a guidance. 
> 
> Dan
> 
> 
>  
>  
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Wijnen, Bert (Bert) [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> > Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 2:04 AM
> > To: Romascanu, Dan (Dan); OPS Area
> > Cc: [e-mail]; MIB Doctors (E-mail)
> > Subject: RE: [AAA-DOCTORS] Enterprise codes - three or four octets
> > 
> > Since, (as you note) there is no problem in the forseeable 
> > future, and since some protocols have already defined fields 
> > that only handle a 24-bit (i.e. 3 octet) value, maybe we 
> > should add some comment in the RFC-Editor mainatined registry 
> > that if they ever get to a value close to 25 bits, that we 
> > (IETF) need to be aware that some (older) protocols have 
> > limited fields of up to 24 bits.
> > 
> > Bert 
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Romascanu, Dan (Dan) [mailto:[e-mail]]
> > > Sent: woensdag 24 januari 2007 15:57
> > > To: OPS Area
> > > Cc: [e-mail]; MIB Doctors (E-mail)
> > > Subject: [AAA-DOCTORS] Enterprise codes - three or four octets
> > > 
> > > I apologize for the cross-posting. I am not sure if this is 
> > a problem, 
> > > but I would like to get some advice. I see in different 
> > documents two 
> > > different ways of coding the SMI Private Enterprise Code. 
> > As far as I 
> > > can understand these numbers should be coded as 32-bit, or 
> > at least I 
> > > could not find any reason to limit them in any document 
> > that mentions 
> > > them starting with RFC 1700. However, in other documents 
> > four octets 
> > > are allocated, but the most significant octet is specified 
> > to be zero 
> > > - see RFC 2865, or the more recent 
> > draft-cam-winget-eap-fast which is 
> > > on the agenda of the IESG telechat tomorrow. An 
> interesting case is
> > > draft-ietf-capwap-protocol-specification-04 which uses 
> > three octets in 
> > > one place and four octets in four other places of the 
> same document.
> > > 
> > > I do not know where the limitation to three meaningful 
> > octets started 
> > > to be applied and why. Maybe we should not care, because 24 
> > bits are 
> > > enough for more than 8 million enterprises, and this may be 
> > enough for 
> > > the future at sight (28k were allocated up to now). I 
> would however 
> > > invite opinions, especially if somebody believes that there is a

> > > problem here and any actions or guidance from the area is
needed.
> > > 
> > > Dan
> > > 
> > > 
> > >  
> > > 
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > AAA-DOCTORS mailing list
> > > [e-mail]
> > > https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/aaa-doctors
> > > 
> > 
> 
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