Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
5. Appendix: DE-osifying MIBs

Up: Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
Up: Requests For Comments
Up: RFC 1212
Prev: 4.2. Usage Example
Next: 5.1. Managed Object Mapping

5. Appendix: DE-osifying MIBs

5. Appendix: DE-osifying MIBs

There has been an increasing amount of work recently on taking MIBs defined by other organizations (e.g., the IEEE) and de-osifying them for use with the Internet-standard network management framework. The steps to achieve this are straight-forward, though tedious. Of course, it is helpful to already be experienced in writing MIB modules for use with the Internet-standard network management framework.

The first step is to construct a skeletal MIB module, e.g.,

               RFC1213-MIB DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN

               IMPORTS
                       experimental, OBJECT-TYPE, Counter
                           FROM RFC1155-SMI;

                       -- contact IANA for actual number
               root    OBJECT IDENTIFIER ::= { experimental xx }

               END

The next step is to categorize the objects into groups. For experimental MIBs, optional objects are permitted. However, when a MIB module is placed in the Internet-standard space, these optional objects are either removed, or placed in a optional group, which, if implemented, all objects in the group must be implemented. For the first pass, it is wisest to simply ignore any optional objects in the original MIB: experience shows it is better to define a core MIB module first, containing only essential objects; later, if experience demands, other objects can be added.

It must be emphasized that groups are "units of conformance" within a MIB: everything in a group is "mandatory" and implementations do either whole groups or none.


Next: 5.1. Managed Object Mapping

Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
5. Appendix: DE-osifying MIBs