[SNMP4J] Question about MacAddress

[snmpguru]

MacAddress is a TEXTUAL-CONVENTION, not a "native" variable type.  It is
defined in SNMPV2-TC:

MacAddress ::= TEXTUAL-CONVENTION
    DISPLAY-HINT "1x:"
    STATUS       current
    DESCRIPTION
            "Represents an 802 MAC address represented in the
            `canonical' order defined by IEEE 802.1a, i.e., as if it
            were transmitted least significant bit first, even though
            802.5 (in contrast to other 802.x protocols) requires MAC
            addresses to be transmitted most significant bit first."
    SYNTAX       OCTET STRING (SIZE (6))

As you can see, a MacAddress is an OCTET STRING that is comprised of 6
octets.  At the PDU level SNMP only knows this is an OCTET STRING, it the
responsibility of an SNMP manager (this is the piece you are writing) to
determine that this is in fact a respresentation of a MAC address (usually
from some form of loaded and compilied MIB, but it could be hardcoded).

Rob
 

-----Original Message-----
From: snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org [mailto:snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org] On
Behalf Of Doug Fischer
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 12:30 PM
To: snmp4j at agentpp.org
Subject: [SNMP4J] Question about MacAddress

I am making a request to get the mac address of a device.  When this is
returned it is of type OctetString, in the mib file, its syntax is
MacAddress.  Why does this come to me as an OctetString?  Why is there no
MacAddress variable type in SNMP4J?  How can I deal with this?

Thank you,
Doug
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