Snmpv3 and Network Management

Running head: SNMPv3 AND NETWORK MANAGEMENT

SNMPv3 AND NETWORK MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

As networking technology continues to spread its reach far and wide, the need to efficiently manage network devices grows more and more significant. An essential data access technology that enables this type of management is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) (Morris, 2010). SNMP has evolved over time and made many improvements. SNMP version 3 is the most recent active version and includes many very useful updates in comparison to previous versions. In short, it brings greater security and useful new message types. Multiprotocol Layer Switching (MPLS) is another essential part of network management and brings along many benefits. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the structure and components of SNMPv3 including its new message format and introduce basic concepts of MPLS. Additionally, there will be mention of the various applications and tasks required to support these network practices.

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SNMPv3 features a modular structure that incorporates subsystems to support specific tasks. SNMPv3 contains two elements, an SNMP engine and SNMP applications. The engine features four sub components; a dispatcher for message sending and receipt, a message subsystem for message processing for SNMP based and other model formats; a security subsystem for user and community based security models and an access control subsystem for access to managed objects. SNMP applications are broken down into five types; command generators for message creation, command responders for message response, notification originators for message traps or informational, notification receivers for processing receipt of traps or informational messages and proxy forwarders for message forwarding between entities.

The message format specification for SNMPv3 is known as RFC 2572 (Morris, 2003) and includes four sections. The...