Question regarding OID and table index

[Frank Fock]

Hi Aby,

OIDs *must* start with 1.3. Index OIDs are never transported over the
wire. When you reference a specific row of a table in SNMP you
*always* provide the OBJECT-TYPE OID prefix (object class OID)
plus the instance index OID suffix (instance identifier). Thus, following
the above rules there should not be any problem.

OIDs not starting with 1.3 cannot be BER encoded nor decoded
correctly. Thus, they cannot be transported over the wire.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Frank

ABY PHILIP wrote:

> Hi,
>
> i have a doubt regarding OIDs used as index. I came across an MIB / agent
> that has OIDs as index of tables in it. However, the description of the
> variable says the OID has only 3 sub identifiers and may not start with
> "1.3". The SNMP library we are using encodes all the OIDs as if they are
> starting with 1.3 - i.e. as 0x2B. The net result is, when we perform GET on
> the index variable we get incorrect values as OID.
>
> Now, the following are my questions -
>
> 1. Does a SNMP Manager ever needs to GET index variables?
>
> 2. Is it ok to have OIDs that do not start with "1.3". I know the first sub
> id may be 0,1 or 2 but is any other permitted.
>
> 3. Is it reasonable to expect snmp libraries to decode OIDs of both type -
> that start with 1.3 OR do not -  to decode them differently.
>
> Has any one come across this kind of problem before?
>
> thanks for your time
> Aby