Policy Information Base

The policy information that is exchanged between the PDP server and PEP and stored in policy databases needs some structure and format. Initial policy uses were specified using text (see RFC 2749 that describes the use of COPS in support of RSVP), but this is neither sufficiently precise to be safe, nor easily extensible as more client types are produced. In particular, there may be common concepts such as interfaces that are shared between policy data for different clients- it would be helpful if this information could be configured and managed coherently.

The IETF recognized that the information to be managed was not dissimilar to that for device configuration and management.

The PIB is in many ways very similar to the MIB. It has tables and rows to contain the information about instances of specific devices and managed entities. These may range from the capabilities and restrictions of devices and interfaces, through the resources and bandwidth, to the specific data flows and policy request. PIBs are specified using the ASN.1 BER just as MIBs are and they use the same basic data types defined in the Structure of Management Information (SMIv2 in RFC 2578). RFC 3318 defines a framework PIB in the context of policy decision points and defines some basic textual conventions for use by other PIB modules.