Essential SNMP: Help for System and Network Administrators

by Douglas Mauro, Kevin Schmidt

Overview

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) provides a "simple" set of operations that allows you to more easily monitor and manage network devices like routers, switches, servers, printers, and more. The information you can monitor with SNMP is wide-ranging—from standard items, like the amount of traffic flowing into an interface, to far more esoteric items, like the air temperature inside a router. In spite of its name, though, SNMP is not especially simple to learn.

O'Reilly has answered the call for help with a practical introduction that shows how to install, configure, and manage SNMP. Written for network and system administrators, the book introduces the basics of SNMP and then offers a technical background on how to use it effectively. Essential SNMP explores both commercial and open source packages, and elements like OIDs, MIBs, community strings, and traps are covered in depth. The book contains five new chapters and various updates throughout. Other new topics include:

• Expanded coverage of SNMPv1, SNMPv2, and SNMPv3
• Expanded coverage of SNMPc
• The concepts behind network management and change management
• RRDTool and Cricket
• The use of scripts for a variety of tasks
• How Java can be used to create SNMP applications
• Net-SNMP's Perl module

The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing, with real examples, how to use SNMP for system and network administration tasks. Administrators will come away with ideas for writing scripts to help them manage their networks, create managed objects, and extend the operation of SNMP agents.

Once demystified, SNMP is much more accessible. If you're looking for a way to more easily manage your network, look no further than Essential SNMP, 2nd Edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596008406
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	09/15/2005
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Douglas Mauro received a bachelor's degree at the University of Albany, New York, and worked as a system administrator for several years before becoming a project engineer with Sun Microsystems, Inc. In addition to his consulting duties with Sun, he authors their internal OneStop Sun Management Center page and has published several InfoDocs with them.

Kevin J. Schmidt currently lives in Lilburn, Georgia. He is a senior software developer at SecureWorks, Inc. (http://www.secureworks.com), where he is lead developer for the comapny's SIM platform. He also leading the development of the company's log analysis service line. Prior to SecureWorks, Kevin was a senior Java/C developer at Reflex Security (http://www.reflexsecurity.com). And prior to Reflex, Kevin spent four years at GuardedNet, Inc. (http://www.micromuse.com/sols/dom_man/sec_man.html)
as a senior software developer and team lead.



Kevin's experience with network management began in 1995 while working at a regional ISP in Pensacola, Florida. In 1996 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to work for MindSpring Enterprises (now known as Earthlink), a national ISP. He spent four years in network management and was the senior network management architect for Earthlink. He left Earthlink to work at Netrail, a tier-1 Internet backbone provider. While at Netrail, Kevin was in charge of the company's network management architecture.

Table of Contents

Preface; Audience for This Book; Organization; What's New in This Edition; Example Programs; Using Code Examples; Conventions Used in This Book; Comments and Questions; Safari® Enabled; Acknowledgments for the Second Edition; Acknowledgments for the First Edition; Chapter 1: Introduction to SNMP and Network Management; 1.1 What Is SNMP?; 1.2 The Concept of Network Management; 1.3 Applying the Concepts of Network Management; 1.4 Change Management; 1.5 Getting More Information; Chapter 2: SNMPv1 and SNMPv2; 2.1 SNMP and UDP; 2.2 SNMP Communities; 2.3 The Structure of Management Information; 2.4 Extensions to the SMI in Version 2; 2.5 A Closer Look at MIB-II; 2.6 SNMP Operations; 2.7 Host Management Revisited; 2.8 Remote Monitoring Revisited; 2.9 Reverse Engineering SNMP; Chapter 3: SNMPv3; 3.1 Changes in SNMPv3; 3.2 USM; 3.3 VACM; 3.4 SNMPv3 in the Real World; Chapter 4: NMS Architectures; 4.1 Hardware Considerations; 4.2 NMS Architectures; 4.3 A Look Ahead; Chapter 5: Configuring Your NMS; 5.1 HP's OpenView Network Node Manager; 5.2 Castle Rock's SNMPc Enterprise Edition; Chapter 6: Configuring SNMP Agents; 6.1 Parameter Settings; 6.2 Security Concerns; 6.3 Agent Configuration Walkthroughs; Chapter 7: Polling and Setting; 7.1 Retrieving a Single MIB Value; 7.2 Retrieving Multiple MIB Values; 7.3 Setting a MIB Value; 7.4 Error Responses; Chapter 8: Polling and Thresholds; 8.1 Internal Polling; 8.2 External Polling; Chapter 9: Traps; 9.1 Understanding Traps; 9.2 Receiving Traps; 9.3 Sending Traps; Chapter 10: Extensible SNMP Agents; 10.1 Net-SNMP; 10.2 SystemEDGE; 10.3 OpenView's Extensible Agent; Chapter 11: Adapting SNMP to Fit Your Environment; 11.1 General Trap-Generation Program; 11.2 Who's Logging into My Machine? (I-Am-In); 11.3 Throw Core; 11.4 Veritas Disk Check; 11.5 Disk-Space Checker; 11.6 Port Monitor; 11.7 Service Monitoring; 11.8 Pinging with Cisco; 11.9 Simple SNMP Agent; 11.10 Switch Port Control; 11.11 Wireless Networking; 11.12 SNMP: The Object-Oriented Way; 11.13 Final Words; Chapter 12: MRTG; 12.1 Using MRTG; 12.2 Viewing Graphs; 12.3 Graphing Other Objects; 12.4 Other Data-Gathering Applications; 12.5 Pitfalls; 12.6 Getting Help; Chapter 13: RRDtool and Cricket; 13.1 RRDtool; 13.2 Cricket; Chapter 14: Java and SNMP; 14.1 SNMP4J; 14.2 SNMP getnext; 14.3 SNMP set; 14.4 Sending Traps and Informs; 14.5 Receiving Traps and Informs; 14.6 Resources; Appendix A: Using Input and Output Octets; Appendix B: More on OpenView's NNM; B.1 Using External Data; B.2 Adding a Menu to NNM; B.3 Profiles for Different Users; B.4 Using NNM for Communications; Appendix C: Net-SNMP Tools; C.1 Net-SNMP and MIB Files; C.2 Common Command-Line Arguments; C.3 Net-SNMP Command-Line Tools; Appendix D: SNMP RFCs; D.1 SMIv1 Data Definition Language; D.2 SMIv2 Data Definition Language; D.3 SNMPv3 Protocol; D.4 SNMP Agent Extensibility; D.5 SMIv1 MIB Modules; D.6 SMIv2 MIB Modules; D.7 IANA-Maintained MIB Modules; D.8 Related Documents; Appendix E: SNMP Support for Perl; E.1 SNMP_Util; E.2 Net-SNMP; Appendix F: Network Management Software; F.1 SNMP Agents; F.2 NMS Suites; F.3 Element Managers (Vendor-Specific Management); F.4 Trend Analysis; F.5 Supporting Software; Appendix G: Open Source Monitoring Software; G-1 Big Brother; G-2 Nagios; G-3 JFFNMS; G-4 OpenNMS; G-5 NINO; Appendix H: Network Troubleshooting Primer; H-1 ping; H-2 ipconfig and ifconfig; H-3 arp; H-4 netstat; H-5 traceroute and tracert; H-6 nslookup and dig; H-7 whois; H-8 Ethereal; Chapter 15: About the Authors; Colophon;