Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs, Second Edition

Appendix C. The Standardization Process

Open systems are predicated on common standards that define how protocols and interfaces should perform. Ideally, if different vendors engineer products to the same standards, the products should function in an identical manner and should be interoperable. This homogenization of functionality does not preclude proprietary value-added features but simply establishes the common ground for base features across multivendor environments. The IETF standard for SNMP management, for example, defines common Management Information Bases (MIBs) for Ethernet, Token Ring, and so on. Vendors may also include proprietary management functionality through vendor-specific MIB extensions. The vendor that complies with standard ...