SNMP configuration
SNMP overview
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet standard protocol widely used for a
management station to access and operate the devices on a network, regardless of their vendors,
physical characteristics and interconnect technologies.
SNMP enables network administrators to read and set the variables on managed devices for state
monitoring, troubleshooting, statistics collection, and other management purposes.
SNMP mechanism
An SNMP-enabled network comprises the following elements:
• SNMP manager—works on a network management system (NMS) to monitor and manage the
SNMP-capable devices in the network.
• SNMP agent—works on a managed device to receive and handle requests from the NMS, and
send traps to the NMS when some events, such as interface state change, occur.
• Management Information Base (MIB)—Specifies the variables (for example, interface status and
CPU usage) maintained by the SNMP agent for the SNMP manager to read and set.
Figure 31 Relationship between an NMS, agent and MIB
A MIB stores variables called “nodes” or “objects” in a tree hierarchy and identifies each node with a
unique OID. An OID is a string of numbers that describes the path from the root node to a leaf node. For
example, the object B in Figure 32 is uniquely identified by the OID {1.2.1.1}.
Figure 32 MIB tree
A
2
6
1
5
2
1
1
2
1
B
SNMP provides the following basic operations:
• Get—The NMS retrieves SNMP object nodes in an agent MIB.
• Set—The NMS modifies the value of an object node in the agent MIB.
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