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4The SpeedTouch
TM
610 SNMP
Application Note Ed. 01
21
4 The SpeedTouch
TM
610 SNMP
Introduction Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely spread method for managing
networks. Based on a client /server concept, the SNMP server (the SNMP manager)
gets or sets the values of objects defined in a Management Information Base (MIB) kept
by the SNMP client (the SNMP agent). In addition the SNMP agent is also able to auton-
omously initiate an action by sending a trap to the SNMP manager.
This section describes the SpeedTouch
TM
610 SNMP implementation and how to use it.
SNMP in the
SpeedTouch
TM
610
SNMP has become the de-facto standard for network management. Especially the moni-
toring aspect has become important: network administrators want to be notified when
things go wrong in their network. In addition, to prevent problems, they also want to be
able to do network load and trend analysis.
SNMP allows the user to access data about the SpeedTouch
TM
610 as defined in several
MIBs. This way the SpeedTouch
TM
610 can perfectly fit in a managed network, moni-
tored by SNMP.
Today, three versions of SNMP exist: SNMP v1, SNMP v2 and SNMP v3. However
currently, the SpeedTouch
TM
610 SNMP agent only supports the SNMP v1 protocol.
Management
Information Base
The Management Information Base, or MIB, is a tree-like structure containing SNMP
objects, instances of these objects and their corresponding values. Parts of this tree
have been standardized, other parts may be specific to a device.
For the SpeedTouch
TM
610 a set of MIBs is provided on the SpeedTouch
TM
610 Setup
CD-rom, some being identical to the standard MIBs, others specifically made for the
SpeedTouch
TM
610 functionality.
The available data covers statistics of the traffic through an interface, errors and setup
information. For details of what information is available consult the MIB definitions at
“4.2 SpeedTouchTM610 MIBs” on page 24.
Community Names Reading MIBs is harmless - unless security parameters could be read (get) -, however,
writing (set) can have severe consequences.
It is not possible to set any behavior changing objects using SNMP. If a malicious user
were to have access to the SNMP interface he would not be able to cause any serious
damage, although - potentially sensitive - statistical and set up information on the
managed device could be learnt.
Therefore, SNMP offers a possibility to restrict access to sensitive MIBs by means of
SNMP ‘Community Names’.
To have specific kinds of access to these MIBs, the SNMP manager has to know the
correct Community Name. A Community Name serves as password and authentica-
tion. On agent-side, a community name is associated with a specific MIB-view (which
MIB objects can be seen by a manager using that community name) and an access policy
(read-only or read-write).
By default, the SpeedTouch
TM
610 uses the default SNMP Community names for read-
only (public) and read-write (private). It is recommended however that the user should
change the default community names thus improving security.