[cacti-announce] Cacti 0.8.6j Released (fwd)

Dorn Hetzel dhetzel at gmail.com
Thu May 17 12:00:26 UTC 2007


ASN.1 is quite concrete, and specifys several encoding methods (I prefer BER
myself) :)
I'm not saying everyone would consider it pretty, but it's quite concrete
...

Check out http://lionet.info/asn1c/


On 5/17/07, Travis H. <travis+ml-nanog at subspacefield.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, May 09, 2007 at 10:25:14AM +0100, michael.dillon at bt.com wrote:
> > A MIB is the database schema for an object-oriented hierarchical
> > database. The key words there are schema and hierarchical.
>
> A-ha!
>
> So when they say "object" as in "OID", they are referring to stuff in
> the MIB database?  Okay, now many things are beginning to make more
> sense.  By itself, that word gives no clue as to what it refers to.
> For that matter, it'd be nice if someone defined LDAP's use of the
> word "attribute", too.
>
> Drift:
>
> LDAP too uses ASN.1, in fact the same OIDs used by SNMP, and in the
> O'Reilly book it mentions that it is possible to define different
> matching rules for each class.  Now, do they mean that somehow, this
> MIB syntax can actually encode an algorithm in some kind of hideous
> turing-machine-gone-mad, and that I've got to worry about malicious
> MIBs, or does it just refer to a routine implemented elsewhere?
>
> > Schema means
> > that it describes how the data is organized
>
> Should read: ``Schemata describe how the data are organized''
>
> Stigma, stigmata; schema, schemata
>
> :-)
>
> Forgive me if I digress into ASN.1 very briefly; it apparently rears its
> ugly head in numerous places in cryptography as well as networking, and
> I have struggled with it a bit.
>
> Based on what I have read, this syntax is "abstract" in the sense that
> it says something like "class C is composed of a DATE object, TIME
> object, and BLARG object", without specifying how to encode or decode
> any of those objects into some concrete form either for the user or to
> put in a packet to send to another system.  The encoding and decoding
> is done with a "transfer syntax", and interpreting it for a human
> (that is, figuring out a way to represent it) is yet another unsolved
> problem.  Sounds a lot like stone soup (or XML) to me.
>
> > That would work but it can be tricky to get the RIGHT MIBs that match
> > the data actually available in your device. Also, reading MIBs can be
> > misleading because you will see things that look great, but don't work
> > because they are deprecated
>
> Those of you who use this word frequently may be amused at its definition:
>
> To pray against, as an evil; to seek to avert by prayer; to seek
> deliverance from; to express deep regret for; to desire the removal
> of. [archaic]
>
> > Now you see where the SNMP alligator swamp lies. If you are building
> > your own network management applications, you may be happier only
> > putting the MIBs on the development machines, and putting the numeric
> > keys into your application code, or better yet, into your application's
> > config file. MIBs have lots of stuff that you probably don't need unless
> > you are allowing users to browse through and query arbitrary data.
>
> Yeah, at this point I'm just playing around and exploring,
> and so want the MIBs to make sense of the numbers.
> --
> Kill dash nine, and its no more CPU time, kill dash nine, and that
> process is mine. -><- <URL:http://www.subspacefield.org/~travis/>
> For a good time on my UBE blacklist, email john at subspacefield.org.
>
>
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