5. OBJECT SYNTAX AND ENCODING

The objects referenced by the protocol are typed. The following describes the object syntax and the encoding rules used by the protocol to convey the values of managed objects.

              -- definition of object types:

              ObjectName ::=
                      OBJECT IDENTIFIER

              ObjectSyntax ::=
                      CHOICE {
                          simple
                              SimpleSyntax,

                          application-wide
                              ApplicationSyntax
                      }

              SimpleSyntax ::=
                      CHOICE {
                          number
                              INTEGER,

                          string
                              OCTET STRING,

                          object
                              OBJECT IDENTIFIER,

                          empty
                              NULL
                      }

              ApplicationSyntax ::=
                      CHOICE {
                          address
                              NetworkAddress,

                          counter
                              Counter,

                          gauge
                              Gauge,

                          ticks
                              TimeTicks,

                          arbitrary
                              Opaque
                      }

The encoding of these types follows the Basic Encoding Rules (BER) of ASN.1 [7]. Each value is encoded as a T-L-V (tag, length, value) triplet.

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