Receiving 'down' notifications rather than 'disabled' from MIB2 'ifadminstatus' OID for interfaces in Juniper Netscreen SSG-5 device (.1.3.6.1.4.1.3224.1.29)

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance
• Network Observability

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Smarts is receiving "down" notifications rather than "disabled" from MIB2 ifadminstatus OID for interfaces in Juniper Netscreen SSG-5 device (.1.3.6.1.4.1.3224.1.29)
• Juniper Netscreen SSG-5 device (.1.3.6.1.4.1.3224.1.29) is reporting a status of admin "down"

Environment

All Supported Smarts releases

Cause

The following OIDs are used to monitor the interfaces found in the Juniper Netscreen SSG-5 device.

• 1.3.6.1.4.1.3224.6.2.3.1.2
• 1.3.6.1.4.1.3224.9.1.1.5

The tables for these Vendor OIDs do not contain the Admin status variable.
In addition, the admin status OID variable from MIB2 table (ifAdminStatus) cannot be used to monitor the interfaces because the indexing in MIB2 is different from that used in NsrpVsdInterfaceTable and netscreenInterfaceTable.
As a result, there is no way to map the interfaces in MIB2 to Netscreen interface tables.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the only option available to Smarts IP systems is to hardcode the Admin Status of the interfaces as UP. Unless a new admin status attribute is added to NsrpVsdInterfaceTable and netscreenInterfaceTable by the vendor (Juniper/Netscreen), admin status must remain hardcoded to provide the required functionality.

Workaround:

To avoid the the issue of receiving "down" notifications instead of "disabled" for interfaces that have been set to an Admin down state, these interfaces should be unmanaged (when administratively down).