A control object to protect against duplication of control commands. Over some transport/network protocols, it is possible for SNMP messages to get duplicated. Such duplication, if it occurred at just the wrong time could cause serious disruption to the collection and retrieval of accounting data, e.g., if a SNMP message setting acctngFileCommand to 'swapToNewFile' were to be duplicated, a whole file of accounting data could be lost. To protect against such duplication, a management application should retrieve the value of this object, and include in the Set operation needing protection, a variable binding which sets this object to the retrieved value.