RE: PMP> MIB Implementers Guide BOF

From: Richard_Landau@Dell.com
Date: Wed Apr 05 2006 - 18:10:20 EDT

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    (I'm sorry I missed the discussion this afternoon.) I would like to
    agree and disagree at the same time. Agreed, without an economic
    incentive, vendors are unlikely to undertake programs to improve their
    implementations. They won't allocate resources specifically aimed at
    that goal. On the other hand, I think that most vendors, as part of
    normal maintenance, make minor improvements to come closer to compliance
    with specifications over time. At least I have observed that in the
    past. If there were tighter descriptions of the semantics of some items
    in the MIB, in an implementer's guide or revised spec, I think that
    vendors might sneak up on correct implementations over time.
     
    If we kept our effort really small and focused on a handful of
    properties in Printer MIB and Host Resources MIB -- choose the worst
    offenders first -- we might be able to get people's attention. (I'd be
    willing to work on a smallish effort.)
     
    rick

    ________________________________

    From: pmp-owner@pwg.org [mailto:pmp-owner@pwg.org] On Behalf Of
    wamwagner@comcast.net
    Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 15:59
    To: Stuart Rowley; pmp@pwg.org
    Subject: Re: PMP> MIB Implementers Guide BOF

    Stuart,
     
    I agree absolutely. Without an economic incentive, the there is little
    likelihood that many vendors will put in any effort to improve or even
    publicize their public MIB implementations. There must be a perception
    of customer demand for general manage-ability of a mixed fleet, products
    of multiple vendors managed by a single application.
     
    Several years ago I expected the trend to third party fleet maintainers
    (e.g., Danka, Ikon, Pitney Bowles) to prompt such a demand; but these
    companies have been silent. More recently I would have expected the
    popularity of assay and hard-copy billing applications (many of which
    could sure stand access to job information from printers) to create a
    demand for consistent job mib implementation; but all I have seen are
    special deals with individual companies to use proprietary features.
     
    Unless compliance with standard MIB (indeed, any management)
    implementations becomes readily identifiable and is demanded as a
    checkoff item on purchase requests, I suspect that there will be little
    motivation to include, update or improve implementations.
     
    Bill Wagner
     

            -------------- Original message --------------
            From: "Stuart Rowley" <Stuart.Rowley@ktd-kyocera.com>
            

            All,

             

            Much of the discussion hinged around getting printer vendors to
    improve their implementations, to perform interoperability or
    certification, and to provide readily accessible information on the
    level of their implementations, etc. so that software applications can
    more successfully manage devices from multiple vendors.

             

            As I think Harry mentioned, the original intent of the printer
    MIB effort was in large part to have third party vendors and the major
    enterprise management apps, such as Tivoli, Unicenter, and OpenView,
    develop robust printer management implementations. When this failed to
    materialize, virtually all printer vendors developed their own software
    to manage their devices and, to a lesser extent, competitors devices as
    well. (or maybe the printer vendors shot themselves in the foot by
    releasing these free printer management apps and killing the incentive
    for other development).

             

            I think many printer vendors may be resigned to the fact that
    the majority of print device management will be done by their own
    management apps and they dont have too much incentive to improve their
    partial management of competitors devices.

             

            Thus, these vendors may have difficulty seeing the benefit of
    the effort involved to move forward with much of the work that was
    proposed during the discussion. Perhaps a listing of the benefits to the
    printer vendors would be necessary to spur interest. Until there is
    market pressure to improve poor SNMP/MIB implementations or a clearly
    defined tangible benefit, I think some printer vendors may not be
    willing to allocate resources to these efforts.

             

            Regards,

             

            Stuart

             

            Stuart Rowley, Network Product Mgr.

            stuart.rowley@ktd-kyocera.com 925 849-3306 925 849-3399
    (fax)

             

            Kyocera Technology Development Inc.

            1855 Gateway Blvd. Suite 400

            Concord, CA 94520

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