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Map Your Network
Continued from page: 1
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
SNMP PROTOCOL
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is used for managing networks. It defines a client-server relationship between agents (the servers) and managers (the clients). A typical agent is a network device (router, computer, printer etc) that maintains information about its current state in a database called MIB (Management Information Base). MIB is a text file consisting of a series of attributes and its corresponding value stored in a standard format. Managers communicate with one or more agents to check their status and/or modify their state. All communication takes place using standard commands and message formats. The three main commands are: read (issued by the manager to read the current value of a variable for an agent), write (issued by the manager to update a variable for an agent) and trap (issued by the agent to report any event, such as the failure of a component, to the manager). Managers use the traversal operation to see which variables a particular agent supports.
The new version of SNMP, SNMPv2, offers many improvements over the initial specification. It includes more data types, such as bit strings, network addresses and counters up to 64-bit. However, one thing it still lacks is security. It does not support any kind of authentication, which is one of the main reasons many vendors prefer to use it for monitoring only (read) and not controlling (write). Work is underway on SNMPv3, which aims to offer enhanced security as well as other improvements. Next Page : OPENNMS:TO MAP AND MONITOR Page(s) 1 2 3
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