Using the SNMP agent with a manager application

The nShield SNMP monitoring agent provides MIB files that can be added to your (third-party) SNMP manager application.

Manager configuration

The manager application is the interface through which the user is able to perform network management functions. A manager communicates with agents using SNMP primitives (get, set, trap) and is unaware of how data is retrieved from, and sent to, managed devices. This form of encapsulation creates the following:

  • The manager is hidden from all platform specific details

  • The manager can communicate with agents running on any IP-addressable machine.

As a consequence, manager applications are generic and can be bought off the shelf. You may already be running SNMP managers, and if so, you can use them to query the SNMP agent.

The manager is initially unaware of the MIB tree structure at a particular node. Managed objects can be retrieved or modified, but only if their location in the tree is known.

It is more useful if the manager can see the MIB tree present at each managed node. The MIB module descriptions for a particular node must be parsed by a manager-specific MIB compiler and converted to configuration files. These files are read by the manager application at run time.

The SNMP agent is designed to monitor all current nShield modules, working with all supported versions of nShield firmware (contact Support for details of supported firmware).