Talk:Simple Network Management Protocol

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[edit] SNMP - No Longer Used?

Hi all, Im not to sure whats going on but according to a guy from Motorola, he claims that SNMP is no longer in operation or supported by the IETF. This was said in a talk he gave to a group of students studying various aspects of network management.

I have his email address and will ask him to email me back with some proof of that, but he assured us in the talk that he was not liying - and I can guarntee you many people in the room who lectured in that area were pretty supprised.

Anyway, just thought id give the heads up.

--Sully 22:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


First off, I'm not overly interested in what the IETF thinks as SNMP is Mission Critical where I work. We also know Motorola as a very poor implementor of SNMP. They much prefer to use their own proprietary NMS tools. I can't speak for the Comcasts of the world, but the mid-sized MSO I work at uses SNMP very extensively. marnues 23:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

marnues is right of course - it's what people are using that really counts. But to clarify the apparent IETF position, I have edited the article slightly. Internet Standard (STD) is as serious as RFCs get, and it's rare that they get this far (most never make it past "proposed standard"). Anything they no longer think relevant is marked "HISTORIC" (and they do have an active program of marking old stuff this way). That they mark it "STANDARD" says they think it's finished (as in complete, not out of date). Not that everyone agrees with the IETF view of course, or that it doesn't have its problems, but the fact that it's also in widespread active service indicates that it's certainly not a dead technology. Behind The Wall Of Sleep 19:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
If that were true, they wouldn't keep publishing new MIBs. But they do. There are new technologies emerging and users will always have choices to pick from. Use what is right for you based on availability and need, rather than marketing hype toward or against SNMP Hardaker 21:06, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Plagiarism

This article IS NOT plagiarism. The original can be found here: Cisco SNMP article, which is copyrighted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Darkmane (talk • contribs) 10:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC).


I tend to disagree.. I took a look at the cisco article offical, and this one here and did some comparing. The content under "Management Information Base (MIBs)" is very similar to that on the offical document. Its like a copy and paste job with a clean up style wise.

Parts of this article may be considered plagiarism, but not the whole anyway.

--Sully 22:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Compatibility between versions?

Can someone please add some data regarding the extent of (backward) compatibility between SNMP versions?

For instance, can devices using SNMP v3, v2(whatever) and v1 operate efficiently on the same network . . . ignoring security issues (in the event it is a standalone environment)?

I am a little surprised that there is no discussion page for the SNMP Article. There are always lively discussions at the IETF meetings. Wes Hardaker, where are you? Randy Preshun? David Levi? Anyone out there? David Battle

Who wants to deal with SNMP more than they absolutely have to? Ha ha, only serious. Then again, Vint Cerf keeps on mentioning once ever few years about how he's going to write SXXP or BXXP or whatever the successor is going to be.... --moof 04:25, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I added the 'section cleanup' tag to the 'Architecture' section. The section starts by listing the three components of an SNMP architecture, but fails to define either of the first two. It makes offhand reference to the second, but does not even mention the first.

I am only now learning about SNMP, so the lack of those definitions makes the page nearly useless. Could someone with a greater knowledge of SNMP fix this?

Maplebed 18:19, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

It's been a while since I did serious work with SNMP, but I've tried to fill in the gaps although the article remains rough around the edges.

Ray Dassen 19:28, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new to editing in Wikipedia. Currently I am studying about SNMPs too. And I have made a few changes in the Architecture and MIBs. I have also added a new section about Proxy agents. Please review and make changes as necessary.

[edit] Yes, but what does it do?

I notice that this article says a lot about the history and the structure of SNMP, but very little about what it actually does or why. Can someone more knowledgeable than me help with this?Urocyon 04:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I've added a bit about router graphing software (which builds on data gathered through SNMP) to the example section. Hope that helps somewhat. Ray Dassen 06:26, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I fleshed out some of the possible uses, with a few starter points to get new people off and running. I also noted a few of the major gotchas that come along with SNMP deployment. Billndotnet 00:06, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
I added both a refference to the Network management model that defines the reason for snmp and to FCAPS that defines the functionality of snmp--Mancini 16:07, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


This is a great technical review that anyone already well versed in SNMP will have no problem following. It is useless in Wikipedia! This article should be written in layman's terms. Move the current article to a glossy networking magazine where it belongs. -- esalkin 12:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A list of SNMP Features would be useful

To help the newbie understand the 'why' of SNMP, it might be useful to start this article with a list of SNMP's features, such as

  • provides a way to ask a device on a network to describe itself.
  • information is organized by keyword and a corresponding value, for example you can ask a device for its 'sysLocation' and receive a response like 'Room 202A'.
  • There is a single family tree (hierarchy) of keywords for all of SNMP, which makes it easy to attach new branches to this tree as new needs arise.

[edit] This seems to be plagiarism.

The introductory paragraph is nearly identical to the Cisco resource found here:

http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/snmp.htm#wp1020581 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.236.240.190 (talk • contribs) 03:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] RE: SNMP is no longer in operation

Thanks for the heads up, Sully.

It may have been dropped by the IETF (I don't know) but it still very much in use in the real world.

It is the most widely used management protocol of its type. I don't have references for this but I have worked in the networking industry for over 10 years and this is my experience.

Endpoint 11:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to move UDP paragraph into separate section

If there are no serious objections, I would like to move the section on UDP ports into a separate section, named something like 'SNMP at the transport layer'

At the moment it is in the section 'SNMPv2 and Structure of Management Information' but it is really about how SNMP uses the transport layer.

UDP ports section reproduced below:

"Typically, SNMP uses UDP ports 161 for the agent and 162 for the manager. The Manager may send Requests from any available ports (source port) to port 161 in the agent (destination port). The agent response will be given back to the source port. The Manager will receive traps on port 162. The agent may generate traps from any available port.

Many distributions change this, however, and this is not necessarily always true."

--Endpoint 11:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] orphaned pages

Network status gathering system seems to be related and is a orphaned article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.112.118.208 (talk) 19:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Really bad description of SNMP

This Wiki page is a really bad description of SNMP. It misses in identifying and describing the fundamental concepts of SNMP.

-- an SNMP RFC editor and co-author, and long time IETF participant

It sounds like you would be a great person to help fix it! Which fundamental concepts would you like to see addressed? Lukeritchie (talk) 23:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)