R3166-R3206-HP High-End Firewalls System Management and Maintenance Configuration Guide-6PW101

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SNMP configuration
NOTE:
The firewall supports SNMP configuration only in the command line interface (CLI).
SNMP overview
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) offers the communication rules between a management
device and the managed devices on the network; it defines a series of messages, methods and syntaxes
to implement the access and management from the management device to the managed devices. SNMP
has the following characteristics:
• Automatic network management: SNMP enables network administrators to search and modify
information, find and diagnose network problems, plan for network growth, and obtain reports on
network nodes.
• SNMP shields physical differences between various devices and thus realizes automatic
management of products from various vendors. Offering only the basic set of functions, SNMP
makes the management tasks independent of both the physical features of the managed devices
and the underlying networking technologies. Thus, SNMP achieves effective management of
devices from different vendors, especially in small, high-speed and low-cost network environments.
SNMP mechanism
An SNMP-enabled network comprises a Network Management System (NMS) and agents.
• An NMS is a station that runs the SNMP client software. It offers a user-friendly interface, facilitating
network administrators to perform most network management tasks.
• An agent is a program resides in the device. It receives and handles requests sent from the NMS.
Only under certain circumstances, such as interface state change, will the agent inform the NMS.
An NMS is a manager in an SNMP enabled network, whereas agents are managed by the NMS. The
NMS and agents exchange management information through the SNMP protocol.
SNMP provides the following four basic operations:
• Get operation: The NMS gets the value of one or more objects of the agent.
• Set operation: The NMS can reconfigure the value of one or more objects in the agent by means of
this operation.
• Trap operation: The agent sends traps to the NMS through this operation.
• Inform operation: The NMS sends traps to other NMSs through this operation.
SNMP protocol version
Currently, SNMP agents support SNMPv3 and are compatible with SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c.
• SNMPv1 uses community names for authentication, which defines the relationship between an
SNMP NMS and an SNMP agent. SNMP packets with community names that did not pass the