SNMP AND CLI

Simple Network Management protocol and Command-Line Interface

Abstract

The exponential growth of the Internet has revolutionized society and technology and is one of the most interesting and exciting phenomena in networking. Two decades ago, the Internet, which is the biggest network of networks, or internetwork, was a research project that involved a few dozen sites and few people had access to a network. Today, the Internet has grown into a production communication system that reaches millions of people in all the countries in the world and computer communication has become an essential part of our infrastructure and culture. Networking is used in every aspect of business, including advertising, production, shipping, planning, billing, and accounting.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Introduction4

Simple Network Management Protocol SNMP4

SNMP Model5

Connection less Transport Service and Port Number8

Command-Line Interface CLI9

Hierarchy of Modes and Contexts12

Dependencies of the CLI Commands13

Context Dependency13

Argument Dependency13

Result Dependency14

Configuration Files14

Conclusion15

References16

Simple Network Management protocol and Command-Line Interface

Introduction

SNMP was initially designed as a short-term solution to manage TCPIIP based networks. It was developed from the Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol (SGMP) in 1988 and enhanced to meet the need for more general-purpose network management. CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol) was defined as the long-range solution in the case of a network transition from TCPIIP to the OSI architecture (Jung, Krishnamurthy and Rabinovich 2002). At that time, it was thought that within a reasonable period of time, TCPIIP installations would give the way to OSI-based protocols. But due to the flourishing of TCPIIP applications and development in 1990s, it seems that TCPIIP will last much longer than all predictions. Therefore, SNMP became the most widely used network management protocol on TCPIIP-based networks and appears to remain in use for the long term. At the same time, the CMIP effort languishes (Jung, Krishnamurthy and Rabinovich 2002).

Whereas, the Command-Line Interface (CLI) is the basic means to configure the network devices and consists of sequences of commands. These commands are text sequences containing parameters and values, keywords, options and command switches that are input by the user at the command line to the operating system of the network device.

Simple Network Management Protocol SNMP

The set of specifications that define SNMP and its related functions and data bases is a series of related RFC (Request For Comment) documents which is still growing. Among them, there are three foundation specifications which are made of the basic SNMP set. They are:

RFC 1155 - Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCPIIP based internets.

RFC 1157 - A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

RFC 1213 - Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II

Since limitations and deficiencies existed in the original SNMP suite, it was enhanced by the publication of SNMP v2 (Coates and Nowak 2000). However, both versions of SNMP lack security features, notably authentication and privacy, which are required to fully exploit SNMP. A recent set of RFCs, known collectively as SNMPv3, now correct this deficiency and add security and remote configuration capabilities to SNMPv2 (Coates and Nowak ...