RFC 5601, "Pseudowire (PW) Management Information Base (MIB)", July 2009

Errata ID: 1856
Status: Held for Document Update
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Alfred Hoenes
Date Reported: 2009-09-08
Held for Document Update by: Stewart Bryant
Date Held: 2011-11-12

Section 12, pg.18 says:

  pwPeerAddrType OBJECT-TYPE
     SYNTAX        InetAddressType
     MAX-ACCESS    read-create
     STATUS        current
     DESCRIPTION
          "Denotes the address type of the peer node.  It should be
           set to 'unknown' if PE/PW maintenance protocol is not used
           and the address is unknown."
     DEFVAL { ipv4 }
     ::= { pwEntry 8 }

  pwPeerAddr OBJECT-TYPE
     SYNTAX        InetAddress
     MAX-ACCESS    read-create
     STATUS        current
     DESCRIPTION
          "This object contains the value of the peer node address
           of the PW/PE maintenance protocol entity.  This object
           SHOULD contain a value of all zeroes if not applicable
           (pwPeerAddrType is 'unknown')."
     ::= { pwEntry 9 }

It should say:

  pwPeerAddrType OBJECT-TYPE
     SYNTAX        InetAddressType
     MAX-ACCESS    read-create
     STATUS        current
     DESCRIPTION
|         "Denotes the address type of the peer node stored in
|          pwPeerAddr.  It should be set to 'unknown' if PE/PW
           maintenance protocol is not used and the address is
           unknown."
     DEFVAL { ipv4 }
     ::= { pwEntry 8 }

  pwPeerAddr OBJECT-TYPE
     SYNTAX        InetAddress
     MAX-ACCESS    read-create
     STATUS        current
     DESCRIPTION
          "This object contains the value of the peer node address
|          of the PW/PE maintenance protocol entity. The type of this
|          object is determined by the corresponding pwPeerAddr object.
|          This object MUST contain a zero-length octet string if not
           applicable (pwPeerAddrType is 'unknown')."
     ::= { pwEntry 9 }

Notes:

Rationale:

a) RFC 4001 requests that every use of InetAddressType and
InetAddress makes explicit the coupling between the objects.
Hence, the DESCRIPTION clause(s) need to be amended.
For clarity, the Corrected text does so for both objects.

b) RFC 4001 (pg. 6) specifies that an InetAddressType object of
value unknown(0) correspond to an InetAddress object
that is a zero-length string, unless unknown(0) is used to
indicate an internet address type not (yet) known (at the time
of publication of RFC 4001). All Standards Track MIB modules
making use of InetAddressType so far couple the value unknown(0)
with an InetAddress of size 0, because an unknown IP address
of a (known) specific type can be represented by the
"unspecified address" of that address format.
Hence, the original text should be changed.
This has been done in the perceived spirit of the conformance
specification for pwPeerAddr on mid-page 51 and page 54.

This is a correct, however, it is unlikely that "unknown" is ever used in an implementation. Therefore it is not critical to fix this, hence classifying as hold for document update.

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