Snmp Overview; Snmp Versions; Chapter 1 Snmp Configuration; Snmp Operation Mechanism - Huawei Quidway S3900 Series Operation Manual

Operation Manual – SNMP and RMON
Quidway S3900 Series Ethernet Switches-Release 1510

Chapter 1 SNMP Configuration

1.1 SNMP Overview

By far, 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 connectionless transport layer protocol UDP; and is thus widely supported
by many products.

1.1.1 SNMP Operation Mechanism

SNMP can be divided into two parts, namely, Network Management Station and Agent:
Network management station (NMS) is the workstation for running the client program.
At present, the commonly used NM platforms include QuidView, Sun NetManager and
IBM NetView.
Agent is the server software operated on network devices.
The NMS can send GetRequest, GetNextRequest and SetRequest messages to the
Agent. Upon receiving the requests from the NMS, Agent will perform Read or Write
operation according to the message types, generate and return the Response
message to the NMS.
Agent will send Trap message on its own initiative to the NMS to report the events
whenever the device status changes or the device encounters any abnormalities such
as restarting the device.

1.1.2 SNMP Versions

Currently SNMP Agent of the device supports SNMP V3, and is compatible with SNMP
V1 and SNMP V2C.
SNMP V3 adopts user name and password authentication.
SNMP V1 and SNMP V2C adopt community name authentication. The SNMP packets
failing to pass community name authentication are discarded. The community name is
used to define the relation between SNMP NMS and SNMP Agent. The community
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Chapter 1 SNMP Configuration