Subject: JMP> Minutes for Printer MIB Working Group at IETF Meeting

From: Ron Bergman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:59:46 -0700 (PDT)

Printer MIB Working Group
                    IETF Meeting  Minutes
                           4/8/97
                  Reported by:  Ron Bergman

The meeting was called to order by Lloyd Young at 1:05 PM CST on 
April 8th at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Printer MIB Working Group presently developing two printer 
related MIBs.  The first is the Printer MIB and the second is the 
Job Monitoring MIB.

The Working Group Chairs are:
	Chris Wellens [email-masked]
	Lloyd Young  [email-masked]

PLANNED AGENDA:

   1. Review of the Printer MIB interoperability testing.
   2. Report on status of the Job Monitoring MIB.

Printer MIB:

The Printer MIB is presently a Proposed Standard and the current 
efforts are to advance to Draft Standard.  One of the prime 
requirements for advancement to Draft Standard is to demonstrate 
interoperability.  This test was performed in February 1997.  A 
brief report was presented by Lloyd Young as to the test methods 
and results of these tests.  A copy of Interoperability test 
results was provided to all interested attendees.

1. Static variables were tested using the Castle Rock SNMPc 
product.

2. Dynamic variables used the Castle Rock SNMPc product for 
Alerts.

3. Additional testing was performed using the InterWorking Labs 
MIB Test Suite.

4. Application testing used:
    IBM's NetCube
    Underscore's Print Alert

QUESTION:  Why was Castle Rock's package used instead of OpenView 
or others?
ANSWER:  This package was recommend by several of the 
participating vendors and Castle Rock provide free licenses for 
the test.

The current schedule for completing the Printer MIB:

 - Last comments must be submitted by May 2
 - New Internet draft ready for Working Group review by May 16
 - Final comments cutoff date is May 30
 - Final draft submission to IESG by June 2

Job Monitoring MIB:

The current status of the MIB was presented by Tom Hastings.  The 
MIB has been simplified to a total of 13 objects, all of which 
are mandatory.  The emphasis is on a Client - Server - Printer 
configuration.

The MIB currently contains four groups / tables.  No traps are 
included in the MIB.

 - The General group contains 5 objects
 - The Job Id group contains 2 objects
 - The Job State group contains 4 objects
 - Attribute group contains 2 objects

QUESTION:  Is this a Job MIB intended for servers in general or 
just print servers?
ANSWER:  The MIB is being designed for Printers but other 
functions such as faxing could use the MIB with extensions.

QUESTION:  The Job Monitoring MIB seems to be focusing on some of 
the same areas as IPP.  Is there any coordination between the two 
projects?
ANSWER:  Yes, the IPP and Job Monitoring programs are both being 
developed by the same people.  The Printer MIB, the Job 
Monitoring MIB and Internet Printing Protocol projects are being 
coordinated to insure that they are compatible.

There was an extended discussion on how the client creates the 
Job Submission Id for the job.  The MIB now specifies a Client 
generated 32 octet Job Submission Id which is really only quasi 
unique.  The Working Group believes that defined methods for this 
identification string result in an extremely low probability of 
duplicate strings.  There was some concern in the audience that a 
100% guarantee of uniqueness must be assured.  

Keith Moore expressed concern that SNMP should not be used for a 
User application.  The Working Group is aware that SNMP is not 
the ideal solution for this problem.  Long term IPP will provide 
a significantly better solution.  This is intended to be a 
solution for current legacy systems.

QUESTION:  If the client job can be sent to one of several 
printers, how do I determine which printer received the job?
ANSWER:  The Job MIB has two objects jmPhysicalDeviceName and 
jmPhysicalDeviceIndex which specify which physical device received 
the job.

QUESTION:  How does the submission id get to the printer?
ANSWER:  The job submission can be either a header or wrapper to 
the job data or imbedded with the PDL of the job.  The Working 
Group believes that the method will be vendor specific and will 
also be unique to the various hardware / software platforms that 
are supported.

Steve Zilles commented about the definition of the Attribute 
Table attributes being Conditionally Mandatory.  He was not sure 
as to the meaning of Conditionally Mandatory in this case.  The 
MIB specification needs to fully define this meaning.

The meeting was closed by Tom Hastings at 3:00 PM CST.