Subject: Re: Last Call: The Inverted Stack Table Extension to the Interfaces Group MIB to Proposed Standard

From: "C. M. Heard/VVNET, Inc." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 11:21:09 -0800 (PST)

On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, The IESG wrote:

> The IESG has received a request from the Interfaces MIB Working Group
> to consider The Inverted Stack Table Extension to the Interfaces Group
> MIB <draft-ietf-ifmib-invstackmib-02.txt> as a Proposed Standard.
>
> The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
> final comments on this action.  Please send any comments to the
> [email-masked] or [email-masked] mailing lists by December 28, 1999.

It is seems clear from reading <draft-ietf-ifmib-invstackmib-02.txt>
that a conforming implementation of the IF-INVERTED-STACK-MIB is
also required to implement ifStackGroup2 from the IF-MIB, but the
conformance statements do not reflect this.

On the one hand, the ifInvStackTable DESCRIPTION clause states
that "[t]his table contains exactly the same number of rows as
the ifStackTable, but the rows appear in a different order", and
the ifInvStackStatus DESCRIPTION clause states that "[a]n instance
of this object exists for each instance of the ifStackStatus object,
and vice versa".  Moreover, since ifInvStackStatus is read-only,
there is no independent means to create delete rows in the
ifInvStackTable.  That is done automatically when rows in the
ifStackTable are created and deleted, and timestamps are
recorded by ifStackLastChange.  So it seems that both of the
objects in IF-MIB's ifStackGroup2 (ifStackStatus and
ifStackLastChange) need to be implemented if the inverted
stack table is implemented.

One the other hand, the only mandatory group in ifInvCompliance is
ifInvStackGroup (which contains ifInvStackStatus), and ifStackGroup2
is an unconditionally optional group in the latest version of the
IF-MIB in <draft-ietf-ifmib-ifmib2-01.txt> (now in last call).

The question arises whether ifStackGroup2 should be added to the list
of mandatory groups in ifInvCompliance.

Mike
--
C. M. Heard/VVNET, Inc.
[email-masked]