When we were putting together the Test Plan for the February
interop testing, we excluded MIB-II. The reason we excluded it
is that in order to get the Printer MIB to DRAFT standard, we
had to test all 179 of its objects and prove them interoperable.
We had a limited amount of time, and we knew we had some big
problems (like the alert tables).
MIB-II is the most widely deployed MIB. It is installed on
hundreds of thousands of network devices. It is already
advanced on the standards track. Therefore, there was no need
for the PWG to do interoperability testing on MIB-II. (Printer
vendors still need to test their MIB-II implementations, but they can
do that testing on their own.)
Recently, there have been discussions about multiple interfaces and
changes to MIB-II. I referred the email describing these issues to
InterWorking Labs' Advisory Board (listed on www.iwl.com) to get a
second opinion. The general consensus is that the situations
are special cases and should be worked out with specialists or
consultants, but that a change to the specification was not
warranted.
Finally, deleting the requirement to implement MIB-II would
prevent us from moving to DRAFT standard, as it would be
considered a significant change.