Ok, in the past, I've just accepted this, but as I'm wanting to monitor more and more devices, it's starting to get really annoying.
I checked a few different devices for ifDescr.1
CCR = sfp1
RB1100 = Ether12
RB435 = Ether1
RB1200 = Ether10
This is so random... can we get some degree of predictability between products? It would be so nice if you could throw an OID at any given RB product and always get Ether1.
A suggestion:
1NN = EtherNN
2NN = SfpNN
3NN = WlanNN
Not sure how best to handle dynamic interfaces, maybe a configuration option that defaults to 1NNN that can be overridden so that if a connection changes from a GRE tunnel to a VPLS tunnel, I can keep the ifIndex value to minimize changes made to the monitoring system.
In addition, there are 3 strings available. It would be very cool if ifName would always use the default interface names (Ether1, Wlan1, Bridge1, Gre1, etc...), while ifAlias contained a user-provided name and ifDescr contained the user-provided comment.
ifName.101 = Ether1
ifAlias.101 = WAN1
ifDescr.101 = Cogent GigE
Anyways, just a thought for ROS7 (or maybe a near-future version of ROS6).