RE: SNMP Manager

[William . Stackpole]

James,

There are a couple of different possibilities.  For the standard SNMP elements you can look at the RFCs.  They define what must be contained in each of replies pretty well.  When you get into vendor specific replies that's a little different.  If you read through the various MIBs you can usually get some idea of what they are reporting on, then you can look that item up in the router manuals to get more details.

Cisco is particularly difficult because they have busted their MIB into 40 pieces.  At the top of each MIB it tells you what MIBs are included so you can walk backward through the includes until to get to the base MIBs.  These are the RFC MIBs and the primary Cisco enterprise MIBs.  The primary MIBs has reasonable descriptions of each of the various modules.

Also, a lot of SNMP replies are numerics and are enumerate into strings so made sure and look in the enumeration areas, they often help explain the parameter you are looking at.

The best approach to using SNMP data is to define what it is you would like to monitor/look at and then find the appropriate call.  A lot of the replies return stuff that has very little value.  If you want to understand it all, your in for a lot of late evenings.  Been there, done that, got the bulging eyeballs to provide it!  ;-]  

Bill Stackpole, CISSP