In order to minimize the instrumentation burden on managed agents, the MIB definitions produced by the working group will whereever feasible be semantically consistent with the managed objects defined in the IEEE Standard 802.3u, Section 30, "10 Mb / s & 100 Mb / s Management".
The working group will produce a document describing MIB objects for use in management of connectivity boxes that include Ethernet ports with a behavior consistent to the repeater ports defined by the 802.3 Standards. The repeater ports will be mapped to the internal box structure that may inlude one or more repeater units that conform to the IEEE 802.3/ISO 8802-3 CSMA/CD standard. If so, all instrumentation variables will be backward compatible with the existing hardware implementations that comply to the IEEE 802.3 repeaters.
The mapping model defined by this MIB module may be used by other type of non-802.3 units (e.g. 802.12 repeaters) to map their own port management objects to the multiple repeaters inside a connectivity box.
Consistent with the IETF policy regarding the treatment of MIB definitions produced by other standards bodies, the working group may choose to consider only a subset of those objects in the IEEE specification and is under no obligation to consider (even for ``Optional'' status) all objects defined in the IEEE specification. Moreover, when justified by special operational needs of the community, the Working Group may choose to define additional MIB objects that are not present in the IEEE specification.
Although the definitions produced by the working group should be architecturally consistent with MIB-II and related MIBs wherever possible, the charter of the working group does not extend to perturbing the conceptual models implicit in MIB-II or related MIBs in order to accommodate 802.3 hubs. In particular, to the extent that the notion of a ``port'' in an 802.3 hub is not consistent with the notion of a network ``interface'' as articulated in MIB-II, it shall be modelled independently by objects defined in the working group.
Because the structure of 802.3 hub implementations varies widely, the working group shall take special care that its definitions reflect a generic and consistent architectural model of hub management rather than the structure of particular hub implementations.
The IEEE hub Management draft allows an implementor to separate the ports in a hub into groups, if desired (i.e., a vendor might choose to represent field-replaceable units as groups of ports so that the port numbering would match a modular hardware implementation). Because the working group charter does not extend to consideration of fault-tolerant, highly-available systems in general, its treatment of these groups of ports in an 802.3 hub (if any) shall be specific to hub management and without impact upon other portions of the MIB.
The working group is further chartered at its discretion to define an SNMP MIB for management of IEEE 802.3 Medium Access Units (MAUs). An 802.3 Medium Attachment Unit (MAU) attaches a repeater port or Ethernet-like interface to the local network medium. The scope of this work may include several types of MAU units: 10BASE-5 (thick coax), 10BASE-2 (thin coax), 10BASE-T (twisted pair), FOIRL and 10BASE-F (fiber optic). Managed objects defined as part of the MAU MIB task may, for example, represent such information as MAU type, link status, and jabbering indications.
The working group is further chartered to define an SNMP MIB for the management of the 100Base-T hubs, MAUs and interfaces, or to propose aditions / changes to existing MIB modules that deal with IEEE 802.3 hubs, MAUs or interfaces in order to extend their support to 100Base-T. In case when those MIB modules are the result of the work of another working group in the NM Area, the proposal will be submited to the directorate and the respective WG.