Re: assumption about number of octets encoding PENs

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 09:53:48AM +0200, Romascanu, Dan (Dan) wrote:
> It looks that we are far away from the 2**32-1 or 2**31-1 limit. 
> 
> My opinion is that we can postpone the discussion about how to extend
> the space beyond 31 or 32 bits for the moment in time when we get
> closer. 
> 
> In the meantime I would suggest that we document in draft-liang: 
> 
> 1. The assumed limit and its reasons
> 2. The fact that although one of the popular uses is SMI, the PENs are
> designed to be used by multiple protocols and DMLs
> 3. The recommendation for future protocols to allocate at least 31 bits
> in fields derived from PEN

My preference would be to suggest that future protocols allocate at
least 32 bits. The SnmpEngineID use case is kind of wired and should
be mentioned in the document but perhaps a solution is simply to
update the SnmpEngineID TC so that 32 bit enterprise IDs can be used
should we ever get close to 2^31 bits. This gives us 2^31 more PENs
should we need them.

> 4. That Enterprise is not always Vendor

/js

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Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
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