Monitoring SNMP Agent


The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet standard that allows management data on different network devices to be read and write by an application. You can use IPSpotter to view and write SNMP objects on any device that implements an SNMP agent.

Installing SNMP Agent

SNMP agent must be installed and enabled on any devices from which you want to receive SNMP information. Windows 95/98/me/NT/2000/XP provide an SNMP agent. Network systems manufacturers provide an SNMP agent for their routers, hubs, and other network boxes. Follow the provided instruction to install SNMP agent. For Windows, you can get instructions by selecting "Start->Help", then typing "snmp agent".

Setting Up MIB Identifiers

IPSpotter uses a reference file, mib.txt to refer to MIB identifiers. The reference file is used by IPSpotter to display the MIB object tree when you browse for an object name/identifier using the SNMP Browser. As shipped with IPSpotter, this reference file contains the SNMP objects defined in the MIB-II standard (see RFC1213).If your network includes devices from a vendor who also provides RFC-compliant MIB files, you can update mib.txt to include the MIB identifiers from the vendor’s file. To do this, you should first make sure that the root identifier in the vendor's file can be found in MIB.txt, then you just append the vendor's file to mix.txt (note: you should save a copy of the original mix.txt).

Setting Up Notification for SNMP Objects

To set notifications for a device, double click on the device to pop up the property dialog or right click the icon, then select Propertis... from the context menu. In the SNMP page, you will see a list of SNMP objects, which are relative to TCP. You can add more objects by modifing the snmpconfig.ini file or click on the Add SNMP Object button. If you want to monitor a SNMP object, check the object, then highlight the object and click on Set Notification. You can set notifications based three different type values:

  • Absolute Value: Note, for a counter SNMP object, such as ifOutOctets; the absolute values may be very large.
  • Change value: The different value between this reading and the last reading.
  • Rate: The average change in a second
  • SNMP Tools

    IPSpotter provides SNMP Interface, MIB Browser, and SNMP Command to help you monitor SNMP objects:
    1. SNMP Interface: Select SNMP Interface from the Action menu to run SNMP Interface. It displays hardware status for a device based on SNMP Objects in the "Interface" group as shown in the following picture:
    Interface

    The colors of hardware items represent the status of hardware:
  • Red: The hardware is down
  • Yellow: The hardware is under testing status
  • Green: The hardware works fine
  • To see the detail SNMP data for a hardware, double click on the item. If you want to continuously monitor the status of these hardwares, select Program Options... from the View menu, then check Monitor.
    2. Mib Browser: To run Mib Browser, Select Mib Browser from the Action menu. Mib Browser consists of three pans. The left pan shows the MIB tree based on mib.txt file; the right pan on top, shows the selected tree item's child item or its SNMP values; while the right pan on bottom shows comments on the selected SNMP object. There are three kinds of icons shown on the top right pan:
  • folder - SNMP group
  • read only - Read only SNMP object
  • writable - Writable SNMP object, you can set SNMP value by double-clicking on the item, then enter new SNMP value.
  • 3. SNMP Command: To run SNMP Command, Select SNMP Command from the Action menu. You can issue Get or GetNext commands with a single or a group of SNMP objects.