Fibre-Channel Name Server MIB
Extracted elements (24)
IP address objects (t11NsRegNodeIpAddress, t11NsRegPortIpAddress) use OCTET STRING rather than InetAddressType/InetAddress because the MIB must faithfully represent whatever value was received in the FC-GS-4 message, including invalid or malformed addresses that could not be encoded in a typed address object.
The three statistics groups (t11NsRequestStatsGroup, t11NsRscnStatsGroup, t11NsRejectStatsGroup) are conditionally mandatory rather than unconditionally mandatory, so that implementations not capturing those statistics are not forced to do so, while implementations that do capture them must expose them via the same MIB objects for interoperability.
The MIB is designed to accommodate multiple Name Server Information Subsets across multiple SNMP agents and contexts; the union of all subsets represents the complete Name Server database, and subsets may overlap (their intersection may be non-empty).
This MIB imports fcmInstanceIndex, FcPortType, FcAddressIdOrZero, FcClasses, and FcNameIdOrZero from FC-MGMT-MIB (RFC 4044), and T11FabricIndex and t11FamLocalSwitchWwn from T11-TC-MIB / T11-FC-FABRIC-ADDR-MGR-MIB (RFC 4439), establishing hard dependencies on those modules.
Deployment of SNMP versions prior to SNMPv3 is NOT RECOMMENDED. Implementors are RECOMMENDED to use SNMPv3 with full cryptographic mechanisms (authentication and privacy) to protect access to this MIB.
The SNMP agent MUST report the actual values of registered objects, even if incorrectly formatted. This is why t11NsNodeIpAddress and t11NsPortIpAddress use OCTET STRING syntax rather than InetAddress, to allow representation of invalid values.
The t11NsInfoSubsetIndex value MUST be kept constant between agent restarts, and every possible effort MUST be made to keep it constant across restarts, to ensure stable indexing of Name Server Information Subsets.
A Fabric Index (T11FabricIndex) is used to index all Fabric-related MIB tables. In FC-SW-3 conformant fabrics the value is always 1; the index accommodates future multi-virtual-Fabric scenarios defined in FC-SW-4.
T11NsGs4RejectReasonCode is a textual convention defining 12 FC-GS-4 reject reason codes (none, invalidCmdCode, invalidVerLevel, logicalError, invalidIUSize, logicalBusy, protocolError, unableToPerformCmdReq, cmdNotSupported, serverNotAvailable, couldNotEstabSession, vendorError), per FC-GS-4 section 4.4.3.
T11NsRejReasonCodeExpl is a textual convention defining 26 reject reason code explanations including portIdentifierNotRegistered through databaseFull, covering authentication/authorization failures, missing registrations, and capacity issues, per FC-GS-4 sections 4.4.4 and 5.2.4.
The T11-FC-NAME-SERVER-MIB module is assigned OID { mib-2 135 } and manages the FC-GS-4 Name Server function, which allows Nx_Ports to register and discover Fibre Channel attributes (names, addresses, types, features) via CT_IUs over Common Transport.
The t11NsInfoSubsetTable indexes all Name Server data by fcmInstanceIndex and t11NsInfoSubsetIndex, allowing a single SNMP agent to expose multiple partial views of the Name Server database, whose union represents the complete registered information set.
The t11NsRegFc4DescriptorTable stores FC-4 Descriptor values indexed by port and FC-4 Type value (0..255). Each descriptor is an OCTET STRING up to 255 bytes whose format depends on the FC-4 Type, stored in network-byte order per FC-GS-4 section 5.2.5.42.
The t11NsRegTable contains one entry per registered Nx_Port, indexed by fcmInstanceIndex, t11NsInfoSubsetIndex, t11NsRegFabricIndex, and t11NsRegPortIdentifier. Each entry holds Port_Name (WWN), Node_Name (WWN), class of service, IP addresses, IPA, FC-4 Types, port type, Fabric Port Name, Hard Address, symbolic names, and FC-4 Features.
The t11NsRejectRegNotify notification is sent when a registration request is rejected for a Name Server Information Subset where t11NsInfoSubsetRejReqNotfyEnable is 'true'. It carries the switch WWN, the rejected port's Port Name, the CT_IU command string, and the three reject code objects.
The t11NsRejectTable records the most recent Name Server Registration Request failure per port per Fabric, holding the raw CT_IU content (up to 255 bytes), the FC-GS-4 reject reason code, reason code explanation, and vendor-specific code. Values are updated immediately before generating a t11NsRejectRegNotify notification.
The t11NsStatsTable provides per-Fabric counters: t11NsInGetReqs, t11NsOutGetReqs, t11NsInRegReqs, t11NsInDeRegReqs, t11NsInRscns, t11NsOutRscns, t11NsRejects, and the boolean t11NsDatabaseFull. All Counter32 objects have no discontinuities except at sysUpTime=0.
IANA assigned OID { mib-2 135 } to the T11-FC-NAME-SERVER-MIB module (t11FcNameServerMIB) under the mib-2 subtree.
The read-write object t11NsInfoSubsetRejReqNotfyEnable (enable/disable notifications) is sensitive; SET operations in a non-secure environment without proper protection can negatively affect network operations. The t11NsRegTable and t11NsStatsTable expose topology and state information that should be protected even for GET and NOTIFY access.
t11NsRegFc4Features is OCTET STRING of SIZE (0 | 128), encoding a 128-byte array of 4-bit values (one per FC-4 Type), where the 5 most significant bits of a Type value identify the word position within the array, per FC-GS-4 section 5.2.3.15.
t11NsRegFc4Type is OCTET STRING of SIZE (0 | 32), encoding a 256-bit array where each bit corresponds to an FC-4 Type value as defined in FC-FS, stored in network-byte order per FC-GS-4 section 5.2.3.8.
t11NsRegHardAddress encodes the 24-bit NL_Port hard address as FcAddressIdOrZero: Domain_ID in the most significant byte, Area_ID in the next byte, and AL-PA in the least significant byte; all zeros if the port is not an NL_Port or has no hard address.
t11NsRegNodeIpAddress and t11NsRegPortIpAddress are OCTET STRING of SIZE (0 | 16), encoding either a 32-bit IPv4 address (right-justified in 16 bytes with leftmost 12 bytes set to x'00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF') or a 128-bit IPv6 address, in network-byte order.
t11NsRegProcAssoc (Initial Process Associator) is OCTET STRING of SIZE (0 | 8), encoding the 8-byte IPA value; zero-length string indicates the attribute was not registered.