SNMP Monitoring

What is SNMP?

A Simple Network Management Protocol, SNMP is native to IP networks and compatible with most network devices. The protocol monitors devices on an IP network and can notify the owner of an issue that needs addressing. As a result, SNMP can provide crucial information about a network’s performance and is essential for network engineers and admins.

Many network monitoring tools rely on SNMP for their visibility into the network infrastructure. This includes routers, switches, firewalls, etc. In addition, major device manufacturers build SNMP support into their devices so that network engineers can get essential data from them.

There are three versions of SNMP. SNMPv1, SNMPv2c and SNMPv3.

• SNMPv1: An initial version that is easy to set up and define in RFC 1155 and 1157.
• SNMPv2c: It is a revised version with advanced protocol packet types, transport mappings, and MIB (Management Information Base) structure elements. It is defined in RFC 1901, 1905, and 1906.
• SNMPv3: It is for remote configurations of SNMP entities and comes with both encryption and authentication. Version 3 is defined by RFC 1905, 1906, 2571, 2572, 2574, and 2575.

What is SNMP Monitoring?

SNMP monitoring is a process of collecting information about network devices’ performance to identify potential problem areas. It is a UDP-based application layer protocol that provides a set of management primitives to monitor and control network devices that run over either IPv4 or IPv6 and use port 161 by default.

SNMP depends upon a client-server application model where a software server, SNMP Manager raises queries to software client, SNMP agent to collect the information. The entire transaction takes place over network devices.

Often, the SNMP agents are pre-installed on most of the network devices. Setting up an SNMP and configuring the manager is the first step to start monitoring.

The Key Components of SNMP Monitoring

As we discussed earlier, the SNMP agents and clients must monitor the SNMP protocol. However, as SNMP provides a flexible framework working various complements together, monitoring health and performance gets a bit easy.

• SNMP Manager: A server, or you may call it an external process that polls network devices to collect the information and response. They are also known as Network Management Station (NMS).
• SNMP Agent: The SNMP agents are pre-installed on the client network devices. It stores the information of device status. However, it can only store the data when SNMP Manager performs polling.
• Managed Device: The devices on which the SNMP agents are installed and configured. Various devices such as routers, firewalls, switches, or even wireless access points can be managed with SNMP.
• Management Information Base (MIB): It is a dictionary of information from network devices, structured hierarchically. Each entry contains a unique object identifier.
• Object Identifier (OID): It is an address that represents a unique piece of information. Object Identifier, OID represents statistics of metrics such as like uptime, temperature, bandwidth, device name, etc.

These components get along in the way to extract insightful information from network devices irrespective of vendors, device types, or the software running on the devices.

SNMP Ports and Traps

The SNMP Ports vary as use cases. For example, SNMP Manager uses the UDP 161 while SNMP Traps use UDP 162. SNMP Traps are nothing but a process of alerting network devices without being polled like SNMP managers.

Traps make sure that the SNMP Managers are updated and on current developments on the devices. However, this process is not being called polling. It is an advantage to the users as SNMP managers are not liable to catch every development taking place.

The traps can be classified into two things. Polled and Autonomous. Polled ones request the updates from the connected network devices periodically, at time intervals set manually. And Autonomous traps are sent automatically to SNMP managers whenever the event takes place, which are also known as alerts as they are triggered whenever a latency or failure occurs.

Benefits of Network Monitoring Tool

SNMP itself is designed in a way to make network monitoring practice easier and simple for the operational tasks. The Network monitoring solution uses SNMP to monitor the network devices. And to make things easier, it also keeps you up to date with your network’s layer, saving a lot of time and resources. Here are a few key benefits of using an SNMP Monitoring Tool.

• Detect the network outages and protocol failures as faster as possible, resulting in higher MTTR
• Get notified for various events and keep an eye on sensitive operations
• Making sure your system is up and running
• Connect all kinds of network devices securely under one roof
• Increase the availability of servers, services, and applications

Network Monitoring with Motadata AIOps

To provide the maximum benefits to your network and its applications, you must approach a powerful SNMP Monitoring tool. Motadata AIOps, being a unified monitoring solution, manages your network and focuses on more challenging tasks.

Motadata AIOps is built on a Deep Learning Framework for IT Operations that helps streamline Network infrastructure. With AI-ML abilities, it learns the network behavior and predicts the potential failures before they cause any damage. The advanced monitoring solution offers a customized dashboard with smart widgets and real-time data of the measured metrics. Overall, it is essential to monitor Network Management when your entire business and the transactions rely on the network’s health. Feel free to reach out to us at sales@motadata.com