Chapter 7: System
ZoneDAS User Guide
Page | 47
The SNMP Screen
Simple Network Management Protocol is a protocol used for exchanging management
information between network devices. ZoneDAS supports SNMP agent functionality,
allowing a manager station to manage and monitor the BU through a network. The BU
supports SNMP version two (SNMPv2c) and version three (SNMPv3). The following figure
illustrates an SNMP management operation.
Figure 37
SNMP Management Model
An SNMP managed network consists of two main types of components: agents and a
manager.
An agent is a management software module that resides in a managed device (i.e. the BU).
The agent translates the local management information from the managed device into a
form compatible with SNMP. The manager is the console through which network
administrators perform network management functions. It executes applications that
control and monitor managed devices.
The managed devices contain object variables/managed objects that define each piece
of information to be collected about a device. Examples of variables include number of
packets received, node port status, etc. A Management Information Base (MIB) is a
collection of managed objects. SNMP facilitates communication between a manager and
its agents for the purpose of accessing these objects.
SNMP itself is a simple request/response protocol based on the manager/agent model. The
manager issues a request and the agent returns responses using the following protocol
operations:
•
Get - Allows the manager to retrieve an object variable from the agent.
•
GetNext - Allows the manager to retrieve the next object variable from a table or list
within an agent. In SNMPv1, when a manager wants to retrieve all elements of a table
from an agent, it initiates a Get operation, followed by a series of GetNext operations.
•
Set - Allows the manager to set values for object variables within an agent.
