Reference Guide

14-14 User’s Reference Guide
1. Select System Name and enter a descriptive name for the Netopia R6000 Series’s SNMP agent.
2. Select System Location and enter the router’s physical location (room, floor, building, etc.).
3. Select System Contact and enter the name of the person responsible for maintaining the router.
System Name, System Location, and System Contact set the values returned by the Netopia R6000 Series
SNMP agent for the SysName, SysLocation, and SysContact objects, respectively, in the MIB II system group.
Although optional, the information you enter in these items can help a system administrator manage the
network more efficiently.
Community strings
The Read-Only Community String and the Read/Write Community String are like passwords that must be used
by an SNMP manager querying or configuring the Netopia R6000 Series. An SNMP manager using the
Read-Only Community String can examine statistics and configuration information from the router, but cannot
modify the router’s configuration. An SNMP manager using the Read/Write Community String can both
examine and modify configuration parameters.
By default, the read-only and read/write community strings are set to public and private, respectively. You
should change both of the default community strings to values known only to you and trusted system adminis-
trators.
To change a community string, select it and enter a new value.
The default SNMP Read/Write Community String is now the empty string, which disables SNMP Set Request
access to the router. Easy Setup does not change the Read/Write Community to match the password created
as part of Easy Setup. You must go to the SNMP menu under the System Configuration menu to set a
Read/Write Community String to enable Set Request access to the router.
The default Read-Only Community String remains “public”.
■ Setting only the Read-Write community string to the empty string will block SNMP Set Requests to the
router, but Get Requests and Get-Next Requests will still be honored using the Read-Only community string
(assuming that is not the empty string).
■ Setting only the Read-Only community string to the empty string will not block Get Requests or Get-Next
Requests since those operations (and Set Requests) are still allowed using the (non-empty) Read-Write
community string.
Even if you decide not to use SNMP, you should change the community strings. This prevents unauthorized
access to the Netopia R6000 Series through SNMP. For more information on security issues, see “Suggested
Security Measures” on page 16-1.
SNMP traps
An SNMP trap is an informational message sent from an SNMP agent (in this case, the Netopia R6000 Series)
to a manager. When a manager receives a trap, it may log the trap as well as generate an alert message of its
own.
Standard traps generated by the Netopia R6000 Series include the following:
■ An authentication failure trap is generated when the router detects an incorrect community string in a
received SNMP packet. Authentication Traps Enable must be On for this trap to be generated.