Managed objects are accessed via a virtual information store, termed the Management Information Base or MIB. Objects in the MIB are defined using the subset of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) [3] defined in the SMI. In particular, each object type is named by an OBJECT IDENTIFIER, an administratively assigned name. The object type together with an object instance serves to uniquely identify a specific instantiation of the object. For human convenience, we often use a textual string, termed the descriptor, to refer to the object type.