[HECnet] Cisco DECnet routers and NML

[Paul Koning]

> On May 4, 2020, at 7:24 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:
> 
> On 2020-05-05 00:29, Thomas DeBellis wrote:
>> I guess a number of things might be happening to build the map, then?
>> 1. Johnny's database gets queried for relevant data
>> 2. A DECnet NICE query is sent, yet these data stores do not have
>>    complete information
>> 3. SNMP query
> 
> Yes, I think the idea would be something like that.

Correct.  However, there is no need to do both 2 and 3, so worrying about SNMP on TOPS-20 (or RSX) isn't necessary.  I can get everything I need from a working NICE implementation.  It can even be somewhat buggy; for example I have a workaround that skips some of the requests when talking to an endnode because of a RSTS bug.  It does have to be minimally sane: the Linux NICE server is so utterly broken that it might as well not exist at all.

The notion of using SNMP is there to handle nodes that don't do NICE, which as far as I know only applies to Cisco routers.  My thinking is that I wouldn't even try to use it unless NICE fails. 

	paul