CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_


Reported by Bob Stewart/Xyplex

CHARMIB Minutes

Agenda


   o Do we have the right starting organization?
      -  Working group position in IETF hierarchy.
      -  Chairman.
      -  Participants.
      -  Editor/author.
   o Is this the right problem?
      -  Character stream devices, not just terminals.  That means
         modems, printers, RS-232, 3270, virtual ports, etc.
      -  All systems, not just terminal servers.  That means general-
         purpose hosts, bridges with a single console port, etc.
   o Existing work to consider?
      -  Draft standard MIBs.
      -  Private MIBs?
   o Technical issues?
      -  List of interesting, common, reasonable information.
      -  Relationship to Interface Group, considering SLIP.


To the questions ``Do we have the right starting organization?''  and
``Is this the right problem?'', the answer (by lack of disagreement) was
yes.  Similarly, the charter was accepted unchanged.  The consensus was
that this is useful, important work, and we can quickly come to a useful
agreement.

The request for ``Existing work to consider?''  brought useful
contributions from those in attendance, particularly from Bill Westfield
of cisco who provided their private terminal MIB. The consensus was that
the various existing private MIBs are quite similar, with most
differences considered as desirable additions.

The ``Technical issues?''  topic resulted in sufficient conclusions for
the following first-draft MIB model.  Character devices are a separate
group, analagous to the Interface Group.  The group contains physical
and logical ports in one table, indexed by sequential integers, with
their real identification and type as objects in the table.  Each table
entry contains such objects as counters for characters in and out,
parity errors, and framing errors.  It has configuration information
such as parity, speed, and bits per character.  It also has status
information, such as the state of modem control signals.  The Character
Group also contains session information for each session on each port.

Character devices that support SLIP have a corresponding entry in the

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Interface Group, which uses the MIB-II object ifSpecific to point to the
corresponding character MIB entry.  When SLIP is active, the Interface
Group entry has an ifOperStatus value of ``up''.  When SLIP is inactive,
the Interface Group status is ``down''.

The group agreed to have a working meeting at the INTEROP conference.

Those who have private terminal MIBs that have not been submitted to the
group are to do so as quickly as possible.  If their company requires
confidentiality, such submissions can be made through Marshall Rose, who
will preserve anonymity.  Bob Stewart is to provide a statement of the
working model, as outlined above.

The next milestone in the charter is a first draft by November.  Given
the above-mentioned submissions, I will attempt to prepare the draft by
the beginning of October, so it can be reviewed at our INTEROP meeting.

Attendees


Anthony Chung            anthony@hls.com
George Conant            geconant@eng.zyplex.com
John Cook                cook@chipcom.com
James Davin              jrd@ptt.lcs.mit.edu
David Jordan             ...jordan@emulex.com
Satish Joshi             sjoshi@mvis1.synoptics.com
Frank Kastenholz         kasten@europa.interlan.com
John LoVerso             loverso@xylogics.com
Keith McCloghrie         kzm@his.com
Donald Merritt           don@brl.mil
David Perkins            dave_perkins@3com.com
Marshall Rose            mrose@psi.com
Bob Stewart              rlstewart@eng.xyplex.com
Bill Townsend            townsend@xylogics.com
Bill Westfield           billw@cisco.com



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