The MPLS WG Archive

["Thomas D. Nadeau" <tnadeau@cisco.com>]

At 10:33 AM 12/30/2002 -0500, Curtis Villamizar wrote:

>In message <A33C33CBF69DCE4DB8170246611F756B14C58D@chn-snr-msg.wipro.com>, 
>"Dee
>pak Sathyamurthy" writes:
> >
> > Hi,
> > =20
> > There are various proposals for supporting trace route and ping on MPLS. =
> > IP ping and trace route use RFC 2925 MIB. Will there be any changes, =
> > additions required to this MIB for supporting MPLS ping and trace route?
> > =20
> > Regards,
> > Deepak
>
>
>Deepak,
>
>First of all, not all MIBs that are defined get used in practice.  I
>know of no ISP that is using the ping MIB to drive pings or collect
>information.  It is just too inefficient to do things that way.  I
>don't think any routers implement it.  I welcome any corrections.

         There are actually many of my customers using the standard
and Cisco-proprietary version of the Ping MIB.  However, as Curtis
points out, on a large scale, use of the MIB directly is problematic
for performance reasons. This is why many of our customers have
moved to using a more automated (proprietary) system called SAA.

>The tier one ISPs that I know have been and probably still are using
>pings are either doing ad-hoc testing or driving tests from pizza
>boxes (1U rackmounts) running *ix that do statistical collection and
>if applicable raise alarms by other means.  In some cases one way
>measurements are made rather than use ping at all.  Traceroute is
>almost always strictly ad-hoc testing or very customized information
>gathering such as the CAIDA skitter program (which doesn't use a MIB).
>
>If we end up doing an LSP-ping MIB, which too may go unused, then
>someone that thinks it will be used can write it.  IMHO it can be a
>separate document.

         It can probably be written as a MIB that augments the existing
one.

         --Tom