The index value used to determine which alerts have been added or removed from the alert table. This is an incrementing integer initialized to 1 when the printer is reset. (i.e., The first event placed in the alert table after a reset of the printer shall have an index value of 1.) When the printer adds an alert to the table, that alert is assigned the next higher integer value from the last item entered into the table. If the index value reaches its maximum value, the next index value used must be 1.

NOTE: The management application will read the alert table when a trap or event notification occurs or at a periodic rate and then parse the table to determine if any new entries were added by comparing the last known index value with the current highest index value. The management application will then update its copy of the alert table. When the printer discovers that an alert is no longer active, the printer shall remove the

row for that alert from the table and shall reduce the number of rows in the table. The printer may add or delete any number of rows from the table at any time. The management station can detect when binary change alerts have been deleted by requesting an attribute of each alert, and noting alerts as deleted when that retrieval is not possible. The objects 'prtAlertCriticalEvents'and 'prtAlertAllEvents' in the 'prtGeneralTable' reduce the need for management applications to scan the 'prtAlertTable'.

NOTE: The above description has been modified from RFC 1759 for clarification.