Product specifications

Chapter 7: Monitoring System Performance Efficient Networks
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Router family
Technical Reference Guide
Page 7-2 Efficient Networks
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SNMP
The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a member of the TCP/IP
protocol suite designed to provide network management interoperability among
different vendors’ management applications and equipment. SNMP provides for the
exchange of messages between a management client and a management agent. The
message contains requests to get and set variables that exist in network nodes, thus
allowing a management client to obtain statistics, set configuration parameters, and
monitor events. These variables (or objects) are defined in Management Information
Bases (MIBs), some of which are general or standard SNMP bases. Other bases,
Enterprise specific MIBs are defined by the different vendors for specific hardware.
Communication with the SNMP agent occurs over the LAN or WAN connection.
Any management application using SNMP over UDP/IP has access to the local
SNMP agent. SNMP network management tools vary but often have features to
display network maps of SNMP nodes, poll nodes at intervals, trigger alarms on
thresholds, graph or list node statistic counters, view and edit individual MIB
variables, and print reports.
An example of useful information that can be obtained from a remote SNMP client
would be the current status of the router’s WAN link and Ethernet interfaces, including
protocol (PPP, CSMA-CD), line speed, maximum frame (transmission unit) size,
physical address, operating status, or packet traffic rates.
MIBs
The MIB is collection of database objects that the system maintains and provides to
the SNMP manager upon request. The supported MIB group or subset, and a
description of their contents are listed in the following table.
Table 7-1: Supported MIBs
Group Definition
System Group This group provides a description of the system. It include the full
name and version identification of the system’s hardware type,
software operating-system, and networking software.
Interfaces Group This group provides information on the system’s interfaces.
Address Transla-
tion Group
This group provides information for converting a Network Ad-
dress into a subnetwork-specific address.
Ethernet Group This group provides information for the Ethernet Port.
IP Group This group provides information for the IP interface of the sys-
tem.