Definition: SNMP is a standard TCP/IP protocol for network management.

Network administrators use SNMP to monitor and map network availability, performance, and error rates.

Using SNMP To work with SNMP, network devices utilize a distributed data store called the Management Information Base (MIB). All SNMP compliant devices contain a MIB which supplies the pertinent attributes of a device. Some attributes are fixed (hard-coded) in the MIB while others are dynamic values calculated by agent software running on the device.

Enterprise network management software, such as Tivoli and HP OpenView, uses SNMP commands to read and write data in each device MIB. 'Get' commands typically retrieve data values, while 'Set' commands typically initiate some action on the device. For example, a system reboot script is often implemented in management software by defining a particular MIB attribute and issuing an SNMP Set from the manager software that writes a "reboot" value into that attribute.

SNMP Standards Developed in the 1980s, the original version of SNMP, SNMPv1, lacked some important functionality and only worked with TCP/IP networks. An improved specification for SNMP, SNMPv2, was developed in 1992. SNMP suffers from various flaws of its own, so many networks remained on the SNMPv1 standard while others adopted SNMPv2.

More recently, the SNMPv3 specification was completed in an attempt to address the problems with SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 and allow administrators to move to one common SNMP standard. Also Known As: Simple Network Management Protocol

MIB (management information base)

In an SNMP system, the hierarchical data structure (not, as it is often mistakenly called, a database) that describes all the "objects" that a device can report the status of and, in some cases, set the value of.

The structure of the MIB is laid out in an SNMP-related standard, RFC 1155, "Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based

Internets," which defines how MIB information is organized and what data types are allowed and how resources within the MIB are represented and named. The MIB contains the name, object identifier (a numeric value), data type and indication of whether the value associated with the object can be read from and/or written to. While the top levels of the MIB are fixed, specific subtrees have been defined by IETF, vendors and other organizations. At the top of the MIB tree is the most general information available about a network, and each branch below contains more detail about specific devices and services. According to RFC 1155: "The root node itself is unlabeled, but has at least three children directly under it: One node is administered by the International Organization for Standardization, with label iso(1); another is administered by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee, with label ccitt(0); and the third is jointly administered by the ISO and the CCITT, joint-iso-ccitt(2)." There are many, many layers under those. Variables in MIB are named using Abstract Syntax Notation 1 (ASN.1), an international standard for representing data types and structures. For example, the MIB variable in the IP subtree that counts incoming IP datagrams is named internet.mgmt.mib-2.ip.iplnReceives. But when sending and receiving messages under SNMP, variable names are not stored as text strings. Instead, a numeric form of ASN.l is used to represent each named node in the tree. This is not only computationally simpler but also reduces the size of packets. These numeric labels create what is effectively an outline numbered ID, starting with the root of the tree as 1. So, 1.1 is a child of the root and a sibling of 1.2 and a parent of 1.1.n. A complete numeric name that starts from the root of the MIB tree is called an object ID (OID). S o for our example using the variable iplnReceives, the sequence of numeric labels that refer to it are 1.2.1.4.3. But that's not all. In an SNMP message the numeric representation of a simple variable name will have a zero appended to signify that the name represents the only

instance of the variable in the MIB. In other words, there are no other identically named variables. So, for iplnReceives, the exact form is "1.2.1.4.3.0." Now, remember that a manageable device is called an agent and a computer that is used to work with an agent is called a network management station (NMS). The management software that runs on an NMS is called a management application. Network equipment that is designed to be managed by SNMP must implement a MIB, and the management application must be told what can be managed on the agent. The collection of the descriptions of all the manageable features might be either a standard or custom MIB subtree, which is described by a MIB module. MIB module files are loaded into the NMS so that the device can be managed. You might be wondering how many MIB subtrees there are. The Web sitemibCentral boasts that it indexes "over 4,900 SNMP MIBs representing over 680,000 MIB object definitions." From The ABCs of MIB, Network World, 07/15/02.