Subject: [Ips] Change to FC Mgmt MIB

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 19:18:26 -0700

All,

An ambiguity has been found in the text of the FC Mgmt MIB that I believe is
not a substantial change, but is an important clarification.
Keith McCloghrie describes issue in the following email, along with a
proposed addition to resolve the issue.
I agree with Keith that this change is important and should be made.

The FC Mgmt MIB has completed IETF last call, so this is a late comment
against the MIB.
The draft is scheduled to be discussed next week, so I am asking everyone to
review the change and if anyone has any comments on the change to please
either discuss it on the IPS mailing list or let David or I know as soon as
possible, but no later than Wed, Oct 13th.
In absence of comment, or upon consensus of the working group, the change
will be made as an RFC Editors note.
  
Thank you,

Elizabeth 
IPS co-chair
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith McCloghrie [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, October 08, 2004 5:56 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked];
[email-masked]
Subject: Re: Last Call: 'Fibre Channel Management MIB' to Proposed Standard

Elizabeth,

I'm sending this email to document the fact that, during T11.5's "Ad Hoc
Management" meeting this week (at which you and I were both present), we
found a minor but potential ambiguity in draft-ietf-ips-fcmgmt-mib-05.txt.
Specifically, this definition:

  fcmInstanceFabricId OBJECT-TYPE
      SYNTAX     FcNameIdOrZero
      MAX-ACCESS read-only
      STATUS     current
      DESCRIPTION
            "The globally unique Fabric Identifier which identifies the
            fabric to which the Fibre Channel entity/entities managed by
            this management instance are connected, or, of which they
            are a part.  This is typically the Node WWN of the principal
            switch of a Fibre Channel fabric.  The zero-length string
            indicates that the fabric identifier is unknown (or not
            applicable)."
      ::= { fcmInstanceEntry 9 }

is written as if the "entity/entities" can be connected to at most one
Fabric.  While that was true at the time it was written, the recent
emergence of Virtual Fabrics in T11 will likely mean that multiple Virtual
Fabrics can be multiplexed onto a single physical port, in which case a
management instance will need to be connected to multiple of them
(otherwise, I can't concieve of how the port can be managed!!).

My suggestion on how to resolve the ambiguity would be to add one sentence
to the above:

             In the event the Fibre Channel entity/entities managed by
             this management instance are connected to multiple fabrics,
             then this object records the first (known) one.

In the future, it may be possible and appropriate to define further MIB
objects, but such are not needed at this time.  All that is needed at the
present time is to remove the future potential of an ambiguity.

Keith.

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