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2. Overview

This section presents an overview of the SNMP architecture, the components of the protocol, and the services it provides. The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application protocol by which management information for a network element may be inspected or modified by logically remote users through the use of the abstract syntax notation and basic encoding rules defined in [6, 7].

The SNMP architecture consists of:

  • The management of internet resources and the definition of managed objects via the Structure of Management Information (SMI) [4].
  • The definition of a Management Information Base (MIB) [5] containing the values of the managed objects.
  • The protocol itself, used to convey management information between the manager and the agents.

The protocol provides services for:

  • get — retrieve the value of one or more managed object instances.
  • get-next — retrieve the value of the "next" object instance in the MIB.
  • set — modify the value of one or more managed object instances.
  • trap — unsolicited event notification sent by an agent.

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