Each interface in the ifIndex can include an interface description, letting vendors put data, such as port speeds and media descriptions, in this field to help mitigate the problem. Concord Communications' Nethealth software creates a database entry for every port from which it collects data. A user-definable field makes it easy to modify the port description to a more meaningful value, such as a true port number. Entering and updating this information does not scale well, so concentrate on the key connections, like those on a backbone. But if you can keep the port mappings up to date, you can publish a data report on the Web.
Switches pose another problem.
But even this information can be of some value if utilization is not high and traffic patterns are asymmetric. You can circumvent this by returning to the older MIB2 standard, which looks at transmit and receive bytes separately. The Sequel RMON only shows statistics based on the Ethernet layer. For example, while RMON will display traffic patterns based on utilization and errors per MAC address, or per MAC-address pairs, traffic that arrives on the network from the other side of a router port will be identified only by the router port's MAC address. In some ways, RMON2 is almost too good.