PMP> How to Resolve the Traps Compatibility Issue

PMP> How to Resolve the Traps Compatibility Issue

Chris Wellens chrisw at iwl.com
Sun May 4 21:01:44 EDT 1997


----------
> From: Ron Bergman <rbergma at dpc.com>
> To: pmp at pwg.org
> Subject: PMP> How to Resolve the Traps Compatibility Issue
> Date: Wednesday, April 30, 1997 7:46 AM
> 
> Harry Lewis has made an excellent suggestion on how to resolve the
> issues with traps.  It is unfortunate though that it is too late to
> use this suggestion to "fix" the Printer MIB, if we discover that 
> changes are required.  


I agree with Harry's approach as well.  I am not sure why you believe it is
"too late".  We have to get this resolved one way or another.  We cannot
submit the latest draft without having a fix for this.  


> I do not believe that an interoperability test is needed in this 
> area.  We do not have to prove that traps work or that every vendor
> that supports traps has implemented them as they intended.  It is
> up to each vendor to verify their design.


I am not sure what you mean by this.  A generic management application
should be able to receive a trap from any printer implementing RFC 1759
(where the manufacturer decided to implement traps).   At the moment, it
appears that traps were used to lock a given printer into a given
management application, and to lock out other printers.  This is referred
to as "using SNMP to provide open, standard, proprietary solutions."   This
is exactly the kind of thing we are trying to prove that we did not do.  


Perhaps you intended to say that getting answers to Harry's questions below
is a necessary first step before considering any more interoperability
testing?  


> We do need to verify that the information presented in the trap PDU
> fields is consistent and is as defined in the SNMP documents.  I
> agree with Harry that the SNMP RFCs are not very clear in this area
> and would guess that we will find differences in the implementations.
> Harry identified the three fields of a v1 trap PDU that must be 
> examined. 
> 
> What about v2 traps?  Are there any v2 trap implementations?
> 
> The three v1 fields Harry highlighted are:
> 
>   1. ENTERPRISE - I can not find a good definition of what this field 
>      is to contain.  To the best of my knowledge this should be 
>      sysObjectId unless it is an "enterprise-specific" trap.  For the
>      latter case this value is as specified by the ENTERPRISE entry
>      of the trap definition. 
> 
>   2. SPECIFIC-TRAP - My guess is this should be the value of 
>      printerAlert (i.e. 1).
> 
>   3. VARIABLE-BINDINGS - In this case what should be presented is
>      clearly defined, especially in light of the recent effort on 
>      the "Top 25 Alert Conditions".  Harry's questions need to be
>      answered.  "Is everyone sending VarBinds?  Are they mandatory?
>      Do we all send the same stuff?"
> 
> I propose that all participants of the interoperability test plus 
> anyone else who is implementing the Printer MIB submit a response to
> the above.  This data can be reviewed in a teleconference or we could
> allocate an hour in the San Diego meeting.
> 
> Any comments?
> 
> 
> 	Ron Bergman
> 	Dataproducts Corp.
> 
> 



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