Compaq AAR04BCTE manual Overview, SNMP Architecture

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Overview

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is the de facto industry standard for managing TCP/IP networks. The protocol defines the role of a network management station (NMS) and the SNMP agent. SNMP allows remote users on an NMS to monitor and manage network entities such as hosts, routers, X terminals, and terminal servers.

TCP/IP Services provides support for SNMP Version 2, using the Extensible Simple Network Management Protocol (eSNMP) architecture, under which a single master agent can support any number of subagents. The TCP/IP Services implementation of eSNMP includes a master agent, two subagents, an application programming interface (API), tools used to build additional subagents, startup and shutdown procedures, and text-based configuration files.

This chapter provides an overview of the Compaq implementation of eSNMP. Topics include:

•eSNMP master agent and subagent architecture (Section 1.1)

•The procedure for handling SNMP requests (Section 1.2)

•The components of the TCP/IP Services software kit that implement SNMP (Section 1.3)

•The files useful in developing your own subagent (Section 1.4)

•The eSNMP API (Section 1.5)

•The management information base (MIB) compiler (Section 1.6)

•The impact of running SNMP Version 1 subagents against the SNMP Version 2 implementation provided with TCP/IP Services (Section 1.7)

•Sources of additional information about implementing subagents (Section 1.8)

1.1SNMP Architecture

Figure 1–1 illustrates the SNMP architecture.

Overview 1–1