RFC 2579 (rfc2579) - Page 2 of 26
Textual Conventions for SMIv2
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 2579 Textual Conventions for SMIv2 April 1999
6 Security Considerations ......................................24
7 Editors' Addresses ...........................................25
8 References ...................................................25
9 Full Copyright Statement .....................................26
1. Introduction
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 an adapted subset of
OSI's Abstract Syntax Notation One, ASN.1 (1988) [1], termed the
Structure of Management Information (SMI) [2].
When designing a MIB module, it is often useful to define new types
similar to those defined in the SMI. In comparison to a type defined
in the SMI, each of these new types has a different name, a similar
syntax, but a more precise semantics. These newly defined types are
termed textual conventions, and are used for the convenience of
humans reading the MIB module. It is the purpose of this document to
define the initial set of textual conventions available to all MIB
modules.
Objects defined using a textual convention are always encoded by
means of the rules that define their primitive type. However,
textual conventions often have special semantics associated with
them. As such, an ASN.1 macro, TEXTUAL-CONVENTION, is used to
concisely convey the syntax and semantics of a textual convention.
1.1. A Note on Terminology
For the purpose of exposition, the original Structure of Management
Information, as described in RFCs 1155 (STD 16), 1212 (STD 16), and
RFC 1215, is termed the SMI version 1 (SMIv1). The current version
of the Structure of Management Information is termed SMI version 2
(SMIv2).
2. Definitions
SNMPv2-TC DEFINITIONS ::= BEGIN
IMPORTS
TimeTicks FROM SNMPv2-SMI;
-- definition of textual conventions
TEXTUAL-CONVENTION MACRO ::=
McCloghrie, et al. Standards Track