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SNMPKIT 0.4 (and up)
What is it:
-----------
SNMPkit is a set of routines for polling snmp v1 devices. The intent
of this toolkit is to make certain kinds of queries very simple. The
two things that snmpkit is designed to do very simply is fill
structures, and requests to massive numbers of hosts. There are other
SNMP toolkits available availble but none that I know of deal with
these two issues quite as well.
Filling structures:
-------------------
Because there is a packet that has to go somewhere and come back for
every SNMP request, it is a good idea to combine multiple requests
into one packet. Also in many cases SNMP objects are arranged in
tables. An individual row might contain several objects. This maps
really neatly to C structures. So snmpkit allows you to define what
objects you want where in the structure and then does the query and
returns to you a filled structure. In the case where there is a table
with multiple rows, snmpkit will return to you a collection of the
structures filled with the appropriate data.
Querying massive numbers of hosts:
----------------------------------
Most of the snmpkits that I looked at either expect you to do your
queries sequentially or allocate one socket per device. When you are
quering literally hundreds or thousands of hosts, then there are
problems with both of these approaches. In the case of the first one
where you do your queries sequentially the problem is time and hosts
that might be down. If you are quering 3000 devices and 5 percent of
them are down, then the 30 seconds do all the retries to make sure
that it isn't just a slow link or a dropped or misrouted UDP packet
adds up. The problem with the second approach is the load that it puts
on your computer. Since there is a 1-1 mapping between the socket and
the host that you are quering, you can quickly run out of
sockets. SNMPkit solves this problem by multiplexing all the requests
on one socket.
Installation
------------
See the INSTALL file.
Licencing
---------
See the COPYING file.
Other SNMP resources
--------------------
Brief History of SNMP - http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Groups/LAN/ClassNotes/snmp/
SNMP FAQ - http://www.landfield.com/faqs/snmp-faq/
NET-SNMP - Another SNMP library with different goals.
http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/
Reference RFC's
---------------
SNMP version 1
rfc1089 - SNMP over Ethernet
rfc1157 - SNMP : Simple Network Management Protocol
rfc1187 - Bulk table retrieval with the SNMP
rfc1212 - Concise MIB definitions.
rfc1213 - MIB-II : Management Information Base for network management of TCP/IP based internets
rfc1215 - Convention for defining traps for use with SNMP
rfc1228 - SNMP-DPI : Simple Network Management Protocol Distributed Program Interface
rfc1270 - SNMP communications services
rfc1303 - A Convention for Describing SNMP-based Agents
rfc1351 - SNMP Administrative Model
rfc1352 - SNMP Security Protocols
rfc1353 - Definitions of Managed Objects for Administration of SNMP Parties
(note: this library only implements version 1 of SNMP)
SNMP version 2
rfc1442 - Structure of Management Information for SNMP version 2
rfc1443 - Textual Conventions for SNMP version 2
rfc1444 - Conformance Statements for SNMP version 2
rfc1445 - Administrative Model for SNMP version 2
rfc1446 - Security Protocols for SNMP version 2
rfc1447 - Party MIB for SNMP version 2
rfc1448 - Protocol Operations for SNMP version 2
rfc1449 - Transport Mappings for SNMP version 2
rfc1450 - Management Information Base for SNMP version 2
rfc1503 - Algorithms for Automating Administration in SNMP version 2 Managers
rfc1759 - Common printer mib.I
SNMP version 3
rfc2570 - Introduction to Version 3 of the Internet standard Network
Management Framework
rfc2571 - An Architecture for Describing SNMP Management Frameworks
rfc2572 - Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management
Protocol (SNMP)
rfc2573 - SNMPv3 Applications
rfc2574 - User-based Security Model (USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMPv3)
rfc2575 - View-based Access Control Model (VACM) for the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP)
rfc2576 - Coexistence between SNMP versions
Acknowlagements
---------------
Cisco Systems for giving me the time to write the original npadmin
code.
VA Linux Systems for giving me the time to abstract snmpkit out of
npadmin.
Hewlett-Packard for paying for the project that needed snmpkit to be
written.
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