Monitoring Health and Welfare Network Management with SNMP

SNMP(Simple Network Management Protocol) 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.