RFC 2452 (rfc2452) - Page 2 of 10

IP Version 6 Management Information Base for the Transmission Control Protocol

RFC 2452                    TCP MIB for IPv6               December 1998


   Management stations execute management applications which monitor and
   control managed elements.  Managed elements are devices such as
   hosts, routers, terminal servers, etc., which are monitored and
   controlled via access to their management information.

   Management information is viewed as a collection of managed objects,
   residing in a virtual information store, termed the Management
   Information Base (MIB).  Collections of related objects are defined
   in MIB modules.  These modules are written using a subset of OSI's
   Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) [1], termed the Structure of
   Management Information (SMI) [2].

2.  Overview

   This document is one in the series of documents that define various
   MIB objects, and statements of conformance, for IPv6.  This document
   defines the required instrumentation for implementations of TCP over
   IPv6.

3.  Transparency of IP versions to TCP

   The fact that a particular TCP connection uses IPv6 as opposed to
   IPv4, is largely invisible to a TCP implementation.  A "TCPng" did
   not need to be defined, implementations simply need to support IPv6
   addresses.

   As such, the managed objects already defined in [TCP MIB] are
   sufficient for managing TCP in the presence of IPv6.  These objects
   are equally applicable whether the managed node supports IPv4 only,
   IPv6 only, or both IPv4 and IPv6.

   For example, tcpActiveOpens counts "The number of times TCP
   connections have made a direct transition to the SYN-SENT state from
   the CLOSED state", regardless of which version of IP is used between
   the connection endpoints.

   Stated differently, TCP implementations don't need separate counters
   for IPv4 and for IPv6.

4.  Representing TCP Connections

   The exception to the statements in section 3 is the tcpConnTable.
   Since IPv6 addresses cannot be represented with the IpAddress syntax,
   not all TCP connections can be represented in the tcpConnTable
   defined in [TCP MIB].






Daniele                     Standards Track