net-snmp Utilities

This book uses the well-known net-snmp tools, which can be downloaded from the Internet for free, to illustrate the examples. From the long list of net-snmp utilities, this book describes snmpget and snmpwalk, the most useful utilities for accounting and performance data retrieval. For further information—specifically, on the different command-line options—refer to the documentation at http://www.net-snmp.org/. The examples in this book use net-snmp version 5.1.2. The different options for snmpget and snmpwalk are explained in the following sections.

Most of the snmpget, snmpwalk, and snmpbulkwalk examples in this book always have the same arguments:

• -v 1 | 2c | 3 specifies the SNMP version to use.

• -c COMMUNITY sets the community string. It is SNMP version 1- or 2c-specific.

• -a PROTOCOL sets the authentication protocol (MD5 | SHA). It is SNMP version 3-specific.

• -l LEVEL sets the security level (noAuthNoPriv | authNoPriv | authPriv). It is SNMP version 3-specific.

• -u USER-NAME sets the security name (such as bert). It is SNMP version 3-specific.

• -x PROTOCOL sets the privacy protocol (DES | AES). It is SNMP version 3-specific.

• -X PASSPHRASE sets the privacy protocol passphrase. It is SNMP version 3-specific.

The syntax for the net-snmp utilities is always the same:

snmpget optional-arguments router managed-object
snmpwalk optional-arguments router managed-object
snmpbulkwalk optional-arguments router managed-object