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What Is SNMP? Why Do We Need SNMP? - Huawei

Li Jiaojiao

As networks rapidly grow in scale and applications become more diversified, network
administrators face the following problems:

The rapid growth in the number of network devices increases the workload for network
administrators. In addition, networks' coverage areas are constantly being expanded, making real-
time monitoring and fault location of network devices difficult.

Networks have many types of devices, and the management interfaces on devices of different
vendors conform to different standards. This makes network management more complex.

SNMP is developed to address these problems. It is a standard network management protocol that
is widely used on TCP/IP networks. It can be used in a network management system to monitor
whether any exception occurs on devices connected to the network. SNMP brings the following
benefits:

Improved work efficiency: A network administrator can use SNMP to query information, modify
information, and locate faults on any device.

Reduced management costs: SNMP provides a basic function set to manage devices that have
different management tasks, physical features, and network types.

Minimized impact of feature configuration operations on devices: SNMP is simple in terms of

hardware/software installation, packet type, and packet format.

Key Components of SNMP

An SNMP system consists of four key components: network management station (NMS), agent,
managed object, and Management Information Base (MIB). The following figure shows the SNMP
management model, which plays an important role in the SNMP architecture.

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SNMP management model

NMS

The NMS is a network manager that uses SNMP to monitor and control network devices. The NMS
software runs on NMS servers to implement the following functions:

Send requests to agents on managed devices to query or modify variables.

Receive traps from agents on managed devices to learn the device status.

Agent

The agent is a process running on a managed device. The agent maintains data on the managed
device, responds to requests from the NMS, and reports management data to the NMS.

Upon receiving a request from the NMS, the agent performs the required operation on the MIB
and sends the operation result to the NMS.

If a fault or an event occurs on the managed device, the agent sends a notification containing the
current device status to the NMS.

Managed Object

A managed object is an object to be managed on a network device. A managed device may contain
multiple managed objects, for example, a hardware component and parameters configured for the
hardware or software (such as a routing protocol).

MIB

A MIB contains the variables that the managed device maintains and can be queried or set by the
agent. The MIB defines the attributes of the managed device, including the name, status, access
rights, and data type. An agent can use the MIB to:

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Learn the current device status.

Set the device status.

An SNMP MIB uses a tree structure with an unnamed root at the top. The following figure shows a
part of the MIB, called an object naming tree. Each object identifier (OID) identifies a managed
object. Each node in the tree is represented by integers separated by periods, corresponding to the
path from the root through the series of ancestor nodes to the node. For example, a system OID is
1.3.6.1.2.1.1 and an interface OID is 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.

OID tree

SNMP Version

SNMP comes in three versions: SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3.

SNMPv1: SNMPv1 is the initial version of SNMP, which provides a method for monitoring and
managing computer networks. It provides authentication based on community names, has a low
security level, and can return only a few error codes. SNMPv1 is defined in RFC 1155 and RFC 1157.

SNMPv2c: Compared with SNMPv1, SNMPv2c has enhancements to standard error codes, data
types, and operations including GetBulk and Inform. It is defined in RFC 1901, RFC 1905, and RFC
1906.

SNMPv3: Seeing that SNMPv2c was still poor in security, IETF released SNMPv3 that provides
User Security Module (USM) authentication and encryption, and View-based Access Control
Model (VACM). SNMPv3 is the most secure version so far. It is defined in RFC 1905, RFC 1906,

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RFC 2571, RFC 2572, RFC 2574, and RFC 2575.

SNMP Ports

SNMP ports are SNMP communication endpoints, and SNMP messages are transmitted through
UDP. Generally, UDP ports 161 and 162 are used. In some scenarios, Transport Layer Security
(TLS) or Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is used. The following table shows the port
usage.

Table 1-1 Introduction to SNMP ports

Process Protocol Port

Request receipt by the agent UDP 161

Manager's communication with the agent UDP 161

Notification receipt by the manager UDP 162

Agent's notification generation - Any available port

Request receipt TLS/DTLS 10161

Notification receipt TLS/DTLS 10162

How Does SNMP Work?

Once SNMP is enabled on the network, the NMS functions as the network management center to
manage devices on a network. Each managed device contains an agent process, MIB, and multiple
managed objects. The NMS interacts with the agent on a managed device. When receiving a
command from the NMS, the agent performs operations on the MIB on the managed device.
SNMP sends protocol data units (also called SNMP GET requests) to network devices that respond
to SNMP. Users can trace all the communication data using network monitoring tools and obtain
data through SNMP.

SNMP defines several types of operations for exchanging information between components.

Table 1-2 SNMP operations

Operation Description Remarks

Get Retrieves one or several variables from the MIB of the agent -
process.

GetNext Retrieves the next variables in alphabetic order from the MIB -
of the agent process.

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Operation Description Remarks

Set Sets one or several variables in the MIB of the agent process. -

Response Returns one or several variables. The agent performs this -

operation in response to the GetRequest, GetNextRequest,
SetRequest, and GetBulkRequest operations. Upon receiving a
Get or Set request from the NMS, the agent queries or modifies
the variables in the MIB, and returns variables to the NMS.

Trap Notifies the NMS of a fault or event occurring on a managed -

device. This operation is performed by the agent.

GetBulk Batch queries variables on managed devices. This operation is SNMPv1 does
performed by the NMS. not support the
GetBulk
operation.

Inform Notifies the NMS of a fault or event occurring on a managed SNMPv1 does
device. After a managed device sends an inform request, the not support the
NMS must send an InformResponse packet as a response to Inform
the managed device. operation.

SNMP Traps

SNMP traps are notification messages sent by an SNMP agent to inform the NMS of alarms or
events generated on a device. In this way, the network administrator can learn the running status
of the device in a timely manner.

There are two types of SNMP traps: trap and inform. The difference between trap and inform is
that, after an SNMP agent sends an alarm or event to the NMS through an InformRequest
message, the NMS needs to reply with an InformResponse message.

Implementation of the Trap Operation

Trap is a spontaneous activity of a managed device and is not a basic operation that the NMS
performs on the managed device. If a trap triggering condition is met on a managed device, the
SNMP agent sends a trap to notify the NMS of the exception. In this way, the network
administrator can process the exception in a timely manner. For example, when a managed device
completes a warm start, the SNMP agent sends a warmStart trap to the NMS.

The agent sends a trap to the NMS only when a module on the managed device meets the trap
triggering condition. This reduces management information exchanged between the NMS and
managed devices.

Implementation of the Inform Operation

Inform is also a spontaneous activity of a managed device. In contrast to the trap operation, the

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inform operation requires an acknowledgement. After a managed device sends an InformRequest

message to the NMS, the NMS returns an InformResponse message. If the managed device does
not receive an acknowledgement, it performs the following operations:

Saves the alarm or event in the inform buffer.

Repeatedly sends the InformRequest message until the NMS returns an acknowledgement or the
maximum number of transmission times is reached.

Records a corresponding alarm or event log on the managed device.

Application Scenarios for SNMP

The NMS can manage devices through SNMP. In the following figure, the network administrator
needs to configure and manage all devices. However, these devices are sparsely-located around the
site, making it impossible for the network administrator to configure and manage them all. To
make matters worse, these devices are from different vendors and provide different management
interfaces, making network management complex. To reduce operation costs and improve work
efficiency, the network administrator can use SNMP to remotely configure and manage network
devices, and monitor them in real time.

To configure SNMP on the network, configure the SNMP NMS on the management device and the
SNMP agent on each managed device.

SNMP allows:

The NMS to obtain device information from the SNMP agent on a managed device at any time, so
as to remotely manage and monitor the device.

Each agent to report the device status to the NMS in real time.

Diagram for device management through SNMP

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