Subject: Proposal for TDU CV information

From: Robert Clouston <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 95 21:21:54 EDT

PROBLEM:
 As new node and TG capabilities are added to the architecture, the MIB must
 be updated as well as agent and manager implementations.  A manager must
 wait for both the MIB and agent updates to be able to show this information.
 These capabilities may be in the form of new fields in existing control 
 vectors, or new control vectors associated with a node or TG.
 
SOLUTION 1:  
 No change to the APPN MIB.  Hope for quick updates to the MIB and agents, and 
 minimal new changes to the TDU CVs.
 
SOLUTION 2: 
 Add the CV objects listed below while keeping the existing objects, and
 keep up with CV updates as best as we can in the MIB and agents.  This
 provides the manager with easy to read node and TG information while 
 allowing extendability for future information.
 
SOLUTION 3:
 Remove all of the objects that represent the CV fields, and replace them
 with the CV objects listed below.  This places a burden of parsing the
 control vectors in the manager, but greatly simplifies the agent code and
 greatly reduces the MIB size and the maintainance problems of the FRSN
 based and non-FRSN based tables.
 
My preference is solution 3. 

**************************************
New CV objects:

appnNnNodeCvs  OBJECT-TYPE
      SYNTAX OCTET STRING 
      MAX-ACCESS read-only
      STATUS current
      DESCRIPTION
           "The hexadecimal string that represent this node in a TDU,
            as documented in SNA Formats.
            This includes the Node Descriptor (X'44) CV that represents
            this node and all additional control vectors until any of 
            the following is encountered:
            
            1) the end of the TDU
            2) the next Node Descriptor (X'44') CV
            3) the next TG Descriptor (X'46') CV            "
            
      ::=  { appnNnTopologyEntry x }

appnNnTgCvs  OBJECT-TYPE
      SYNTAX OCTET STRING 
      MAX-ACCESS read-only
      STATUS current
      DESCRIPTION
           "The hexadecimal string that represent this TG in a TDU,
            as documented in SNA Formats.
            This includes the TG Descriptor (X'46) CV that represents
            this TG and all additional control vectors until any of 
            the following is encountered:
            
            1) the end of the TDU
            2) the next Node Descriptor (X'44') CV
            3) the next TG Descriptor (X'46') CV            "
            
      ::=  { appnNnTgTopologyEntry x }
      
Of course there are corresponding entries for appnNnNodeFRCvs and
apnNnTgFRCvs.