Snmp Configuration; Overview; Snmp Versions And Supported Mib - 3Com Switch 4500 26-Port Configuration Manual

Overview

SNMP Versions and
Supported MIB
16
SNMP C
ONFIGURATION
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) has gained the most extensive
application in the computer networks. SNMP has been put into use and widely
accepted as an industry standard in practice. It is used for ensuring the
transmission of the management information between any two nodes. In this way,
network administrators can easily search and modify the information on any node
on the network. In the meantime, they can locate faults promptly and implement
the fault diagnosis, capacity planning and report generating. SNMP adopts the
polling mechanism and provides the most basic function set. It is most applicable
to the small-sized, fast-speed and low-cost environment. It only requires the
unverified transport layer protocol UDP; and is thus widely supported by many
other products.
In terms of structure, SNMP can be divided into two parts, namely, Network
Management Station and Agent. Network Management Station is the workstation
for running the client program. At present, the commonly used NM platforms
include Sun NetManager and IBM NetView. Agent is the server software operated
on network devices. Network Management Station can send GetRequest,
GetNextRequest and SetRequest messages to the Agent. Upon receiving the
requests from the Network Management Station, Agent will perform Read or
Write operation according to the message types, generate and return the
Response message to Network Management Station. On the other hand, Agent
will send Trap message on its own initiative to the Network Management Station
to report the events whenever the device encounters any abnormalities such as
new device found and restart.
To uniquely identify the management variables of a device in SNMP messages,
SNMP adopts the hierarchical naming scheme to identify the managed objects. It
is like a tree. A tree node represents a managed object, as shown in the figure
below. Thus the object can be identified with the unique path starting from the
root.
Overview 279