NYCPHP Meetup

[inforequest]

Ajai Khattri ajai-at-bitblit.net |nyphp 04/2004| wrote:

> Jon Baer wrote:
>
>> Is SNMP really that "simple"? 
>> Maybe its just me or does it sometimes seem like MIBS are so entirely 
>> complex that the name of the protocol does not do it justice?  I dont 
>> see that many PHP based admin tools, does anyone know of any?  It 
>> also seems like many of the hardware items Ive toyed around with are 
>> Ver 1 based vs. 3 ... its a protocol that screams for XML yet they 
>> stick with this SMI stuff.  Maybe someone w/ more SNMP experience can 
>> explain.
>>
>
> I feel the same way - and there are no books that explain it in simple 
> terms. (Hence my request yesterday). Im playing with cacti (which uses 
> SNMP).
>

I spent 2 hours studyig SNMP as a management tool for internetworks 
under Mark Miller many moons ago. He was *passionate* about hands-on 
control of the SNMP process, from hand-crafting MIBS from the ground up 
(for any device you like), to capturing data streams and breaking apart 
each piece for knowledge of what was happening on the network. As I 
recall he was way ahead of his time, in that network management tools at 
the time were all but ridiculously over hyped and under powered.

Standards held back reliable deployment then, which he aptly 
demonstrated every other minute or so.

His book "*Managing Internetworks With SNMP" *was good after taking that 
course, but without the training it is considered a very difficult book, 
not for beginners. The "official" books are listed here 
http://www.snmp.com/protocol/snmpbooks.html.

-=john

**