Re: [OPSAWG] Working group last call on "Ethernet in the First Mile Copper (EFMCu) Interfaces MIB"

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 02:02:20PM +0000, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> Well, copying the IETF MIB modules with all the names 'as-is' excepting the names of the MIB modules and the names of the sub-branches is what the IEEE 802.3 seem to have done, including in the revised IEEE 802.3.1 which was just approved. I asked Howard Frazier for a copy of the MIB modules in the recently approved document for confirmation. 
> 
> Section 3.1 of RFC 2578 says: 
> 
> >    The set of descriptors defined in all "standard" information modules
>      shall be unique.
> 
> Allegedly IEEE 802.3 MIB modules are not IETF "standards". From this perspective what they have done is not 'illegal'. They may have thought that they are actually making life of some of the management applications easier in transition, as they will continue to use the same names, just load a different MIB module. 
> 
> Question is what we do at this point. The I-D we have just Last Called reflects the reality - good or bad. 
> 

Well, then this is what they did. Document it - perhaps add a warning
that tools must to be able to deal with prefixed descriptors since
descriptors are for sure not unique anymore if if both old (pre IEEE)
and new MIB modules need to be supported. But then, people will also
figure this out quickly once they try and perhaps tools have generally
improved to deal with this situation better than in the past.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>