[netdisco-devel] Implementing "extended ifType" methods

[<j.v...@ut...>]

Hi,

Just wanted to get some of your opinions... there's a patch on SF for
SNMP::Info to override the i_type() data in the HP class with data from
hpSwitchPortType (tracker id: 2599795). 

I can see how that's useful: the ifType info is usually limited in that
it doesn't differentiate between various Ethernet port types. The
hpSwitchPortType does, as it returns values like "fastEther" and
"gigabitEthernetLX". And Cisco has the portType variable in the
cisco-stack-mib, which contains values like "e1000BaseLH" and
"e10a100BaseTX".

On the other hand, in earlier versions these kinds of overrides existed,
but seem to have been removed in favor of the more consistent ifType
data.

Personally I'd like to be able to choose between the basic ifType and
the vendor specific "extended" interface type info. It's been very
useful to me in the past that Netdisco could tell me whether a link had
an SX or LX transceiver. 

What would be a good way to implement this? The patch submitter
suggested to implement a "vendor_i_type()" method in device classes. How
do others feel about this? Perhaps implementing vendor_i_type() in
device classes could be combined with a config option in Netdisco to
choose between using i_type() or trying vendor_i_type() first, then
falling back to i_type() if a vendor-specific method isn't implemented?


Regards,

Jeroen van Ingen
ICT Service Centre
University of Twente, P.O.Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands