Comparison of SNMP 1
Comparison of SNMP
Versions 1, 2 and 3
Eddie Bibbs
Brandon Matt
ICTN 4600-001
Xin Tang
April 17, 2006
Comparison of SNMP 2
During its development history, the communities of researchers, developers,
implementers and users of the DARPA/DoD TCP/IP protocol suite have experimented
with a wide range of protocols in a variety of different networking environments. The
Internet has grown, especially in the last few years, as a result of the widespread
availability of software and hardware supporting this system. The scaling of the size and
scope of the Internet and increased use of its technology in commercial applications has
underscored for researchers, developers and vendors the need for a common network
management framework within which TCP/IP products can be made to work.
In recognition of this need, several efforts were started to develop network
management concepts which might be applied to the Internet and to the internet
technology in general. Three of these efforts had made sufficient progress by the end of
1987 that it became clear that some choices had to be made or the community would find
itself with a set of incompatible network management tools. These efforts included the
High-Level Entity Management System (HEMS), the Simple Gateway Monitoring
Protocol (SGMP) and the Common Management Information Service/Protocol.
In the short term, however, the Internet desperately needs tools to apply to the
operational management problems associated with it rapid growth. Given the present
state of advanced implementation of the SGMP and its relative simplicity, the general
agreement was that SGMP (or its re-named successor, SNMP) should be quickly brought
to more complete specification for widespread implementation and use. Soon after,
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) succeeded SGMP for its ease and
versatility.
Comparison of SNMP 3
SNMP was a protocol developed to manage nodes (including servers,
workstations, routers, switches and hubs and any other peripheral device) on a network.
SNMP is an application protocol that is encapsulated, or encased, in the User Datagram
Protocol (UDP). UDP is a connectionless transport layer (layer 4) protocol in the OSI
model that provides a simple and unreliable message service for transaction-oriented
services. SNMP enables network administrators to manage network performance, find
and solve network problems, and plan for network growth.
An SNMP managed network consists of three key components: managed
devices, agents, and network-management systems (NMSs). A managed device is a
network node that contains an SNMP agent and that resides on a managed network.
Managed devices collect and store management information and make this information
available to NMSs using SNMP. Managed devices, sometimes called network elements,
can be routers and access servers, switches and bridges, hubs, computer hosts, or printers.
An agent is a network management software module that resides in a managed device.
An agent has local knowledge of management information and translates that information
into a form compatible with SNMP. An NMS executes applications that monitor and
control managed devices.
Currently, there are three versions of SNMP defined: SNMP v1, SNMP v2 and
SNMP v3. Both versions 1 and 2 have a number of features in common, but SNMPv2
offers enhancements, such as additional protocol operations. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3)
adds security and remote configuration capabilities to the previous versions. To solve the
incompatible issues among different versions of SNMP, RFC 3584 defines the
coexistence strategies.
Comparison of SNMP 4
SNMP v1 is the initial implementation of the SNMP protocol. SNMPv1
operates over protocols such as User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Internet Protocol (IP),
OSI Connectionless Network Service (CLNS), AppleTalk Datagram-Delivery Protocol
(DDP), and Novell Internet Packet Exchange (IPX). SNMPv1 is widely used and is the
de facto network-management protocol in the Internet community.
SNMP is a simple request/response protocol. The network-management system
issues a request, and managed devices return responses. This behavior is implemented by
using one of four protocol operations: Get, GetNext, Set, and Trap. The Get operation is
used by the NMS to retrieve the value of one or more object instances from an agent. If
the agent responding to the Get operation cannot provide values for all the object
instances in a list, it does not provide any values. The GetNext operation is used by the
NMS to retrieve the value of the next object instance in a table or a list within an agent.
The Set operation is used by the NMS to set the values of object instances within an
agent. The Trap operation is used by agents to asynchronously inform the NMS of a
significant event.
Now version 1 wasn’t without its problems. The main problems of the version 1
are the authentication of the message source, protecting these message from disclosure
and placing access controls on the Management Interface Base (MIB- this is a logical
database made up of the configuration, status and statistical information stored at a
device) database. SNMP v2 was designed in 1993 and was to be an evolution of its
predecessor. The Get, GetNext, and Set operations used in SNMPv1 are exactly the same
as those used in SNMPv2. However, SNMPv2 adds and enhances some protocol