baker@VITAM6.UUCP (Fred Baker) (10/12/89)
This is getting to be an interesting conversation. As for Frank's three approaches, the one I've observed is the first - two vendors get together, one of whom wants to OEM or reference sell the other's product, and agree on the MIB thingies needed to provide the service in question. Of course, competitors don't necessarily make the same deal - they go to Other Guy Inc, who defines a different set of MIB objects to perform a similar service. Now, if First Guy Inc puts its MIB objects into the public domain using some sort of MIB Distribution service (SMTP to MIB@NIC?), then this sort of stuff gets less play, and First Guy Inc is a Good Person In The Internet. Hubba Hubba. It seems to me that the Net Management Station gets its download of MIB thingies offline and stores them - after all, an ASN.1 Object is supposed to be forever invariant. He doesn't put his head up in a firefight. Now, it seems to me that the question of relevence is: how does Generic Inc's management station really make use of the MIB objects? Given that he has downloaded the representation, name, definition, and humanspeak verbiage about an object, at the moment about all that he can do is say that NETWORK.BOX.FROM.<VENDOR> sent out GOOD.THING.TO.KNOW, which it dutifully stores in a database, prints out, or graphs. So? Fred Baker baker@vitalink.com