Re: [netmod] An abundant amount of IANA if types...

Ladislav Lhotka <lhotka@nic.cz> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have argued several times in the past that the IANA interface list (and, for
> that matter, the iana-if-type module) is a useless pile of rubbish because
> 
> - for some interface classes (Ethernet, tunnels) it is way too coarse-grained
> 
> - on the other hand, it contains a lot of stuff that nobody will ever use
> 
> - using the cabalistic (and wrong, in fact) name "ethernetCsmacd" for Ethernet
> is outright stupid
> 
> - YANG identities allow for encoding important relationships in interface types,in the flat list all this information is lost 
> 
> - as you say, implementing the iana-if-type module means that all interface
> types listed therein become valid.
> 
> So yes, I do believe that it would be useful if authoritative expert groups
> develop a better structure of interface type identities.

I agree.  At the time when we did ietf-interfaces, not many people had
experience with using identities; and we didn't have YANG 1.1.  So we
just used what we had in the MIB, but as identities.  Now that we have
much more experience, it would be great to build a better way to
identify interfaces and their properties.

/martin

> 
> Lada
>   
> On Thu, 2018-04-05 at 23:59 +0000, Alex Campbell wrote:
> > I haven't seen any previous discussions on the topic, but we have a similar
> > problem.
> > Note this is not really to do with YANG itself, so much as the practical
> > limitations of the software package that provides our CLI interface.
> > In NETCONF, the existence of extra unused identities doesn't pose any problem.
> > 
> > From: netmod <netmod-bounces@ietf.org> on behalf of Bogaert, Bart (Nokia -
> > BE/Antwerp) <bart.bogaert@nokia.com>
> > Sent: Thursday, 5 April 2018 8:21 p.m.
> > To: netmod@ietf.org
> > Subject: [netmod] An abundant amount of IANA if types...
> >  
> > Hi,
> >  
> > We were wondering if it would make sense to introduce features in the IANA if
> > types YANG model to enable grouping of related interface types.  This would
> > allow implementations to include only the types it really requires (by
> > supporting the related features but not the others) and (in case of a CLI
> > interface) would reduce the possible completions if an operator would ask for
> > the possible values of the type of an interface.
> > Has this ever been considered/discussed?
> >  
> > Best regards,
> > Bart
> > _______________________________________________
> > netmod mailing list
> > netmod@ietf.org
> > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
> -- 
> Ladislav Lhotka
> Head, CZ.NIC Labs
> PGP Key ID: 0xB8F92B08A9F76C67
> 
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