Cabletron Systems 9A100 manual Appendix B Agent Support

APPENDIX B AGENT SUPPORT

This appendix briefly describes the support provided for managing the SmartSwitch 9A100 using Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

B.1 MIB, SMI, MIB FILES AND INTERNET MIB HIERARCHY

A MIB (Management Information Base) is the term used to represent a virtual store of management data on a device. Given the structure of management data, it can be operated upon (retrieved, created or modified) using the SNMP protocol. The structure of that data is defined using a subset of a notation called Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1). This subset is called SMI (Structure of Management Information). A file containing the definition of that structure is called a MIB file. To provide for a uniform naming convention for all MIBs, from all vendors, for all kinds of data, a standard format is used. This format is a hierarchy and is termed the Internet MIB Hierarchy.

The MIB structure is logically represented by a tree hierarchy (see Figure B-1). The root of the tree is unnamed and splits into three main branches: Consultative Committee for International Telegraph and Telephone (CCITT), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and joint ISO/CCITT.

These branches and those that fall below each category have short text strings and integers to identify them. Text strings describe object names, while integers allow computer software to create compact, encoded representations of the names. For example, the ZeitNet MIB variable znIpAtmClient is an object name and is also represented by the number one.

An object identifier in the Internet MIB hierarchy is the sequence of numeric labels on the nodes along a path from the root to the object. The object for the Internet Standard for MIB II is represented by the object identifier 1.3.6.1.2.1. It also can be expressed as iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib (see Figure B-1).

Note For the authoritative reference on the concepts described in this section, refer to RFCs 1901 through 1908.

SmartSwitch 9A100 User Guide B-1