Instruction Manual

Pulsar Plus Controller Family
Issue 7 December 2011 191
Appendix F: SNMP
SNMP Overview
In addition to supporting the basic protocols (Telnet, HTTP, FTP, and SMTP) on TCP/IP, the Pulsar Plus family
of controllers support conveying system alarm and control information to a Network Operation Center
(NOC) using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP is the most popular protocol for
managing diverse networks. Using SNMP to access management information data and retrieve alarm
information can allow company personnel to more easily manage system performance and remotely find
and solve system problems. A controller serves as an SNMP Agent. A SNMP Host system is used to
communicate to a multitude of SNMP Agents. A number of SNMP Host packages are available such as HP
OpenView, Castle Rock Computing SNMPc, IBM NetView, Lucent OneVision, and Sun Micro’s NetManager.
Lineage Power Systems also provides a SNMP Host focused on the needs of the power engineer with its
Manager product.
Simple Network Management Protocol is an application-layer protocol designed to facilitate the exchange of
management information between network devices. There have been several releases of SNMP in its history
and the controller implements an SNMPv2C Agent. SNMPv2C is backwards compatible with SNMPv1.
A key part of the SNMP protocol is the detailed Management Information
Base (MIB) that describes all Agent variables that can be accessed. For the controller, this includes all the
objects controlled or monitored in the system such as: rectifiers, converters, distribution monitoring cards,
alarms, etc. Essentially, all elements described in the T1.317 protocol (see Appendix B) are available in
SNMP. The MIB will be needed by any SNMP Host that wishes to communicate with the controller and can
be retrieved at the “Design Tools and Download” link located at
http://www.lineagepower.com .
SNMP Operations
Interactions between the SNMP Host and the SNMP Agent can be any of four different types of commands:
Reads, Writes, Traversal operations, and Traps. SNMP utilizes six operations to respond to the various SNMP
Hosts: Get, GetNext, GetBulk, Set, Trap, and Inform. The controller implements the Get, GetNext, Set, and
Trap operations.