Chapter 26 Access Control

Figure 83 Access Control

26.3 About SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application layer protocol used to manage and monitor TCP/IP-based devices. SNMP is used to exchange management information between the network management system (NMS) and a network element (NE). A manager station can manage and monitor the switch through the network via SNMP version one (SNMPv1) and/or SNMP version 2c. The next figure illustrates an SNMP management operation. SNMP is only available if TCP/IP is configured.

Figure 84 SNMP Management Model

An SNMP managed network consists of two main components: agents and a manager.

An agent is a management software module that resides in a managed switch (this device). An agent translates the local management information from the managed switch into a form compatible with SNMP. The manager is the console through which network administrators perform network management functions. It executes applications that control and monitor managed devices.

The managed devices contain object variables/managed objects that define each piece of information to be collected about a switch. Examples of variables include such as number of packets received, node port status etc. A Management Information Base (MIB) is a collection of managed objects. SNMP allows a manager and agents to communicate for the purpose of accessing these objects.

SNMP itself is a simple request/response protocol based on the manager/agent model. The manager issues a request and the agent returns responses using the following protocol operations:

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