SNMP Manager/Agent Communication

The following figure shows an example of the communication process between SNMP managers and agents. Manager Requesting Number of Sessions from an SNMP Agent

The communication between the SNMP manager and SNMP agent in the example proceeds in the following fashion: 1. The SNMP manager, Host A, forms an SNMP message that contains an information request (Get) for the number of active sessions, the name of the community to which the SNMP manager belongs, and the destination of the message the IP address (131.107.3.24) of the SNMP agent, Host B. The SNMP manager can use either the Microsoft SNMP Management API library (Mgmtapi.dll) or the Microsoft WinSNMP API library (Wsnmp32.dll) to perform this step. 2. 3. The SNMP manager sends the information request to Host B by using the SNMP service libraries. When Host B receives the message, it verifies that the community name (MonitorInfo) contained in the packet is on its list of acceptable community names, evaluates the request against the agents list of access permissions for that community, and verifies the source IP address. If the community name or access permission is incorrect, and the SNMP service has been configured to send an authentication trap, the agent sends an authentication failure trap to the specified trap destination, Host C. Hosts B and C belong to the TrapAlarm community. 4. The master agent component of the SNMP agent calls the appropriate extension agent to retrieve the requested session information from the MIB.

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Using the session information that it retrieved from the extension agent, the SNMP service forms a return SNMP message that contains the number of active sessions and the destination the IP address (131.107.7.29) of the SNMP manager, Host A. Host B sends the response to Host A.

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Snmpv2 features:
SNMPv2 agent provides community-based security level to the users whereas SNMPv3 agent is an advanced version of SNMPv2 agent that provides additional administrative structure, authentication, and privacy through USM and VACM. For more details on advanced security level of SNMPv3 agent, refer to "Configuring SNMPv3 Agents" from the help documentation. The major difference between SNMPv2 agent and SNMPv3 agent is based on the level of security provided by each type of agents. 5)

m2TcpLib, m2TcpInit( ), m2TcpGroupInfoGet( ), m2TcpConnEntryGet( ), m2Tcp ConnEntrySet( )

Difference between SNMPv1 and SNMPv2

SNMPv1 is the initial implementation of the protocol and SNMPv2 is an enhancement over version 1. The significant differences between SNMPv1 andSNMPv2 are as below: Protocol operations used in SNMPv1 are Get, GetNext, Set and Trap. SNMPv2 defines two more protocol options GetBulk and Inform. Trap PDU format is different than other PDUs formats in SNMPv1. In version 2, trap pdu format is same as the format of get and set pdus. In SNMPv1, if in a get request one of the object instance in multiple-attribute request does not exist or is invalid, no response would be given, only an error message would return. In SNMPv2, in such a scenario, response would return for all other object instances or attributes except the invalid value i.e. partial response would be there rather than error.