Re: [IETFMIBS] Display of InetAutonomousSystemNumber

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 05:21:24PM -0400, Jeffrey Haas wrote:

> InetAutonomousSystemNumber is defined in the INET-ADDRESS-MIB.  It has
> no display hint and a base type of Unsigned32.
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-michaelson-4byte-as-representation-05.txt
> proposes representing 4 byte AS numbers in a <top half>.<bottom half>
> format among others.
> 
> Given that the base type is Unsigned32 rather than OCTET-STRING, in
> order to provide a display hint that would cover this format, we'd need
> a display hint that can effectively do math.  We don't have one.  

The authors of the SMIv2 and the authors of the INET-ADDRESS-MIB
simply did not anticipate this (but we did anticipate that there will
be 32-bit AS numbers - at least something ;-).

It might be possible to write down in the DESCRIPTION clause how this
number is to be formatted and then tools will either come with special
code to get this right or they will fall back to the default of
showing a number. A more fancy solution would require to update the
SMIv2 and I have some doubt that this will find much support (and even
then implementations would need to be updated; so this does not buy
you much in terms of actual deployment).

So I think the way to go is to add text to the INET-ADDRESS-MIB how
this value should be rendered once a decision on the format has been
taken and the INET-ADDRESS-MIB is getting revised.

/js

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