3Com Switch 8800 Advanced Software V5 Configuration Guide

1050 CHAPTER 83: SNMP CONFIGURATION

■ Get operation: NMS gets the behavior information of the Agent through this

operation.

■ Set operation: NMS can reconfigure certain values in the Agent MIB

(management information base) to make the Agent perform certain tasks by

means of this operation.

■ Trap operation: Agent sends Trap information to the NMS through this

operation.

■ Inform operation: NMS sends Trap information to other NMSs through this

operation.

SNMP Protocol Version Currently, SNMP agents support SNMPv3 and are compatible with SNMPv1 and

SNMPv2c.

SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c authenticate by means of community name, which defines

the relationship between an SNMP NMS and an SNMP Agent. SNMP packets with

community names that did not pass the authentication on the device will simply

be discarded. A community name performs a similar role as a key word and can be

used to regulate access from NMS to Agent.

SNMPv3 offers an authentication that is implemented with a User-Based Security

Model (USM for short), which could be authentication with privacy, authentication

without privacy, or no authentication no privacy. USM regulates the access from

NMS to Agent in a more efficient way.

MIB Overview Management information base (MIB) is a collection of all the objects managed by

NMS. It defines the set of characteristics associated with the managed objects,

such as the object identifier (OID), access right and data type of the objects.

MIB stores data using a tree structure. The node of the tree is the managed object

and can be uniquely identified by a path starting from the root node. As illustrated

in the following figure, the managed object B can be uniquely identified by a

string of numbers {1.2.1.1}. This string of numbers is the OID of the managed

object B.

Figure 309 MIB tree

SNMP Configuration As configurations for SNMPv3 differ substantially from those of SNMPv1 and

SNMPv2c, their SNMP functionalities will be introduced separately below.

Follow these steps to configure SNMPv3: