H3C Technologies H3C S3100 Series Switches - Manual (Page 446)

Operation Manual – SNMP and RMON
H3C S3100-52P Ethernet Switch Chapter 1 SNMP Configuration
1-1
Chapter 1 SNMP Configuration
1.1 SNMP Overview
By far, the simple network management protocol (SNMP) has gained the most
extensive application in the computer networks. SNMP has been put into use and
widely accepted as an industry standard in practice. It is used for ensuring the
transmission of the management information between any two network nodes. In this
way, network administrators can easily retrieve and modify the information about any
node on the network. In the meantime, they can locate faults promptly and implement
the fault diagnosis, capacity planning and report generating.
As SNMP adopts the polling mechanism and only provides basic function set, it is
suitable for small-sized networks with fast-speed and low-cost. SNMP is based on user
datagram protocol (UDP) and is thus widely supported by many products.
1.1.1 SNMP Operation Mechanism
SNMP is implemented by two components, namely, network management station
(NMS) and agent.
An NMS can be a workstation running client program. At present, the commonly used
network management platforms include QuidView, Sun NetManager, IBM NetView, and
so on.
Agent is server-side software running on network devices.
An NMS can send GetRequest, GetNextRequest and SetRequest messages to the
agents. Upon receiving the requests from the NMS, an agent performs Read or Write
operation according to the message types, generate the corresponding Response
packets and return them to the NMS.
When a network device operates improperly or changes to other state, the agent on it
can also send trap messages on its own initiative to the NMS to report the events.
1.1.2 SNMP Versions
Currently, SNMP agent on a network device supports SNMPv3, and is compatible with
SNMPv1 and SNMPv2C.
SNMPv3 adopts user name and password authentication.
SNMPv1 and SNMPv2C adopt community name authentication. The SNMP packets
containing invalid community names are discarded. SNMP community name is used to
define the relationship between SNMP NMS and SNMP agent. Community name