CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Frank Kastenholz/Clearpoint Research Corp
Minutes of the Ethernet MIB Working Group (ETHERMIB)
The Ethernet MIB Working Group met at the Santa Fe IETF meeting on
Thursday, November 21, 1991.
The first order of business was to review the administrative issues
surrounding the Working Group:
1. The charter and the ``Pax Davin'' were reviews and discussed at
length. The fact that we will strictly adhere to the rules of
charter and the ``Pax Davin'' was openly discussed and agreed to by
all present.
2. The Working Group decided to try to have the documents required by
the charter ready for publication at the same time as the MIB is
put forward for Draft Standard status. This would be in about 6
months. These two documents are:
(a) An explanation for the assignment of MANDATORY status to
optional 802.3 variables, and
(b) An implementation report on the MIB variables.
(c) A mailing list will need to be created.
[This has been done -- enet_mib@europa.clearpoint.com.]
After discussing administrative issues, the Working Group turned its
attention to the MIB itself. The following items were discussed (thanks
to Anil Rijsinghani of DEC for his notes of the meeting). Any changes
to the MIB will be made to the version to be put forward for DRAFT
STANDARD status.
1. The Working Group discussed the text in the MIB which allows an
implementation to return 0 for counters for which the underlying
events are not counted. It was realized that this wording makes it
impossible to disambiguate the two cases of not implementing a
counter and and 0 occurences of the underlying event.
The Working Group discussed the issue and a vote was taken on it.
The group decided to remove the offending text from the document.
The Working Group realized that for variables to which this text
applies, there are four alternatives which should apply:
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(a) Delete the variable from the MIB entirely as its utility has
not been demonstrated by wide implementation experience,
(b) Move the variable into a separate optional MIB Group,
(c) The implementor must figure out some way to support the
variable, and
(d) The implementor would not implement the variable, return
noSuchName errors whenever the variable is accessed and not
claim compliance to the MIB.
2. The possibility of an 802.3 specific (as opposed to DIX Ethernet
specific or common to both) mib group was discussed. It was
decided to continue this discussion on the mailing list.
3. The dot3StatsExcessiveDeferrals object is implemented in only one
chip out of 14 studied by Anil Rijsinghani. It should either be
made optional or removed from the MIB. The other mandatory objects
are implementable with commonly available chips and supporting
software.
This will be considered for further study on the mailing list.
4. The TDR definition in the MIB is not sufficient, given that IEEE
802.3 does not define this object. It does not describe the two
conditions under which the object is defined, and how to
distinguish between them (short and open cable faults). Anil
Rijsinghani will contribute text to clarify this.
Attendees
Steve Alexander stevea@i88.isc.com
Miriam Amos Nihart miriam@decwet.zso.dec.com
James Barnes barnes@xylogics.com
Steve Bostock steveb@novell.com
Jack Brown jbrown@huachuca-emh8.army.mil
Theodore Brunner tob@thumper.bellcore.com
Philip Budne phil@shiva.com
Jeffrey Buffum buffum@vos.stratus.com
James Codespote jpcodes@tycho.ncsc.mil
Tracy Cox tacox@sabre.bellcore.com
Dave Cullerot cullerot@ctron.com
James Davin jrd@ptt.lcs.mit.edu
Jeff Erwin
Bill Fardy fardy@ctron.com
Shawn Gallagher gallagher@quiver.enet.dec.com
Greg Hollingsworth gregh@mailer.jhuapl.edu
William Jackson jackson@manta.nosc.mil
Ole Jacobsen ole@csli.stanford.edu
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Ronald Jacoby rj@sgi.com
Satish Joshi sjoshi@synoptics.com
Scott Kaplan scott@ftp.com
Frank Kastenholz kasten@europa.clearpoint.com
Manu Kaycee kaycee@ctron.com
Mark Kepke mak@cnd.hp.com
Yoav Kluger ykluger@fibhaifa.com
Ron Lau rlau@synoptics.com
Evan McGinnis bem@3com.com
Lynn Monsanto monsanto@sun.com
David Perkins dperkins@synoptics.com
Anil Rijsinghani anil@levers.enet.dec.com
M. Richard Rose
Marshall Rose mrose@dbc.mtview.ca.us
Jonathan Saperia saperia@tcpjon.enet.dec.com
Mark Schaefer schaefer@davidsys.com
Timon Sloane peernet!timon@uunet.uu.net
Bob Stewart rlstewart@eng.xyplex.com
Bruce Taber taber@interlan.com
Kaj Tesink kaj@nvuxr.cc.bellcore.com
Dean Throop throop@dg-rtp.dg.com
Maurice Turcotte dnmrt@interlan.com
Steven Waldbusser waldbusser@andrew.cmu.edu
Frank Welch
Jeremy Wilson
June-Kang Yang natadm!yang@uunet.uu.net
Wengyik Yeong yeongw@psi.com
John Ziegler ziegler@artel.com
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