prtMagicCookie updated proposal

prtMagicCookie updated proposal

Bill Wagner bwagner at digprod.com
Fri Oct 18 10:42:45 EDT 1996


     
     I agree with Dave that we must understand what the objective of 
     prtMagicCookie is, and define it to meet that objective.
     
     I agree that the original objective was to allow a management app "to 
     determine how to interact with the printer (for job submission, in 
     particular)", although only job submission via TCP/IP was initially 
     considered; indeed, the addition of chPortTCP and chBidirPortTCP 
     channels are what prompted the object in the first place.
     
     Further, the discussion in New York suggested that this objective was 
     not easily satisfied for channels other than chPortTCP and 
     chBidirPortTCP. The difficulty was sufficient to consider whether this 
     objective was an appropriate one for the MIB. It is unclear that 
     providing sufficient information about a channel for a management app 
     to set up a job submission path was ever an intent of the MIB.


     Aside from Dave's comment about human readability in his proposal, I  do  
     not know where it came from, or what the intent was. If the objective is
     allowing a management app to set up a job submission path, I see no reason
     why human readability is necessary or even desirable. If there are other 
     objectives requiring human readability, they should be explicitly stated
     and agreed to before we worry about how to implement human readability.


     So, I suggest we review the objective of including this object. If it
     is to be implemented for only two channel types, we must
     consider if it is warranted. If it is an important capability and one      
     critical to the applicability of the MIB, then we should consider if we
     can put in the effort to define the object fields for all channel types, or
     merely identify how one could define these fields (probably useless).


     I have not seen a printer with SNMP that did not also have a private MIB, 
     and the private MIB usually contains the sort of information necessary to 
     satisfy the initial objective. So it can be done, but probably not         
     reasonably with one object. Perhaps this is better handled elsewhere?


      Bill Wagner, DPI 



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