[comp.dcom.sys.cisco] gremlins in SNMP code?

swatt@noc.net.yale.edu (Alan S. Watt) (05/29/90)

I have noticed several times now while monitoring a cisco gateway that
certain SNMP interface variables appear to be reset.  At first I thought
this was just my problem in handling 32-bit integer overflow conditions,
but as the following log shows, this is not the case:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thu May 24 18:54:32 1990	sysUpTime_0	0x14ce0099   349044889
Thu May 24 18:54:32 1990	ifInOctets_1	0xc56f39   12939065
Thu May 24 18:54:32 1990	ifOutOctets_1	0x49682acd   1231563469

Thu May 24 19:09:36 1990	sysUpTime_0	0x14cf61d8   349135320
Thu May 24 19:09:36 1990	ifInOctets_1	0xebcef1   15453937
Thu May 24 19:09:36 1990	ifOutOctets_1	0x49795036   1232687158
	inOctets = 2514872 	outOctets = 1123689

Thu May 24 19:24:42 1990	sysUpTime_0	0x14d0c3bb   349225915
Thu May 24 19:24:42 1990	ifInOctets_1	0x15b471   1422449
Thu May 24 19:24:42 1990	ifOutOctets_1	0x4982cb27   1233308455
	inOctets = -15311688	outOctets = 621297

Thu May 24 19:39:47 1990	sysUpTime_0	0x14d2254b   349316427
Thu May 24 19:39:47 1990	ifInOctets_1	0x3a5fdd   3825629
Thu May 24 19:39:47 1990	ifOutOctets_1	0x499e336e   1235104622
	inOctets = 2403180	outOctets = 796167

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The polling is done at 15-minute intervals.

Subsequent entries continue to add reasonable increments to the "inOctets"
variable.

The polling process is killed and restarted every night at 2AM, so if
the polling program itself was getting confused, this would show up
when the log files rolled over, but it doesn't.

This is no write-access defined for this router, so the counters cannot
be modified by SNMP.  It is running 7.1(17) (AGS/2).

Anybody know any problems which could account for this?

	- Alan S. Watt
	  High Speed Networking, Yale University
	  Computing and Information Systems
	  Box 2112 Yale Station
	  New Haven, CT  06520-2112
	  (203) 432-6600 X394
	  Watt-Alan@Yale.Edu

satz@cisco.com (Greg Satz) (05/30/90)

There are known ASN.1 integer encoding bugs in the older 7.1 software
releases. These bugs make the numbers appear to go backwards. 8.0 and
beyond have these problems corrected. Drop a note to
customer-service@cisco.com for information on newer bits.

Greg