Essential SNMP - Softcover

Mauro, Douglas; Schmidt, Kevin; Schmidt, Kevin J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0596000200 ISBN 13: 9780596000202

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 2001

Synopsis

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for managing hosts on an IP network. Devices that typically support SNMP include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks, UPSs, and more.Essential SNMP is a practical introduction to SNMP for network and system administrators. It starts with the basics of SNMP and how it works, along with the technical background to use it effectively. The book covers OIDs, MIBs, community strings, traps, and other technical elements. But the main focus is on practical network administration: how to configure SNMP agents and network management stations, how to use SNMP to retrieve and modify variables on network devices, how to configure management software to react to traps sent by managed devices.Essential SNMP explores both commercial and open source packages, including HP's OpenView, Castle Rock's SNMPc, the Net-SNMP tools, Simon Leinen's Perl SNMP support, and MRTG. 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. In addition to SNMPv1 and v2, the book covers SNMPv3, which has just started to appear in commercial products as of this printing.

About this title

Review:

Without Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), network administrators might have to actually get out of their chairs and go see what's up with all of the network-connected equipment under their authority. Perish the thought. Essential SNMP explains how the management protocol works and how it's implemented by several operating systems and pieces of equipment. More importantly, this book shows its reader--who should be a network administrator who's familiar with the problems of running a distributed network--how SNMP can earn its place as a network administration tool. In other words, this book examines SNMP as a strategic resource as well as a technical phenomenon.

Because it's oriented toward SNMP as a tool, much of the coverage in this book has to do with software that uses SNMP to provide network monitoring and control services. After a strengths-and-weaknesses overview of a number of SNMP packages, the authors use mainly HP OpenView, Castle Rock SNMPc, and Net-SNMP (the last in combination with Perl scripting) to demonstrate how SNMP works and how to take advantage of it. It's the scripting that really distinguishes this book from other SNMP books, by the way. It's integral to the authors' presentation, and the latter half of this book is packed with shell and Perl listings. --David Wall

Topics covered: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and its applicability as a network management tool. Details like object identifiers (OIDs), management information bases (MIBs), traps, and community strings are defined and explained. The configuration of SNMP agents is detailed for several software packages and operating systems, and the integration of SNMP and scripts (in shell languages and in Perl) is covered nicely.

About the Author:

Douglas R. Mauro lives outside of Rochester, New York, with his wife Amy, daughter Kari, and cat Megabyte (a.k.a. Meg). He 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. Computers are not just a way of life for Douglas, but a profound passion. He feels extremely fortunate to be working in a field he truly loves.

Kevin J. Schmidt lives in Decatur, Georgia. He shares a home with his significant other, Callie, their loving cats, Chester and Twiggy, two Peruvian guinea pigs, two Litoria species White's tree frogs, and several poison dart frogs. Originally from Pensacola, Florida, Kevin spent several years studying computer science at the University of West Florida. In late 1996 he was recruited by MindSpring Enterprises (now known as Earthlink, Inc.), a national ISP based in Atlanta, and subsequently left school to pursue his career. 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. These days Kevin works as a software engineer for Guarded.Net, a network security start-up in Atlanta. Kevin's first computer was a Commodore 64. He began running Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) at age 11 and later became interested in computer networking in general. His other computing interests include Linux, MySQL, and programming in C, Java, Perl, and PHP. Kevin will soon have his private pilot's license and plans to become instrument and multiengine rated soon thereafter. He recently discovered the LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robotics Invention System, where he uses Dave Baum's Not Quite C (NQC) for Linux to control his robotic creations.

About this edition

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0596000200
• ISBN 13: 9780596000202
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300