Re: specifics on NetView's SNMP capabilities? v1/2/3 poll/trap

I'm reviewing ticked mail from the mailing list and will answer one of
my own for posterity.

Todd H wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> Where can I find a description of what NetView can and can't do with
> respect to both SNMP polling and SNMP trap reception for snmpv1,2, and 3?
> 
> A table such as the following is what I'm enivsioning:
> 

Netview 6.02 capabilities
----------------------------------------------------------------------
        recv  |            | mon thresh's/ | mon thresh's|
        traps | browse MIB | poll elements | poll tables | comments
------+----------------------------------------------------------------
snmpv1| yes   | xnmbrowser | yes           | yes         |
------+----------------------------------------------------------------
snmpv2| NV yes| xnmbrowser2| kinda-if      |             | Netview
      | MLM no| and        | snmpget can   |             | relies on
      |       | xnmloadmib2| see it, can   |             | snmpv2 agents
      |       | required   | hand-edit     |             | responding to
      |       | for SMIv2  | snmpCol.conf  |             | snmpv1 pdu's
      |       | MIB files  |               |             | exclusively
------+----------------------------------------------------------------
snmpv3| no    |    no      |  as above     |             | as above
------+----------------------------------------------------------------


Part of the snmpv2 and v3 standards for agents is that they have to
respond to SNMPv1 PDU's sent to them.  NetView relies upon this
functionality heavily.  

To my knowledge, NetView never sends anything but SNMPv1 PDU's out to
an agent for status polling, discovery, demand poll, configuration
checking, or data collections/thresholds, or
/usr/OV/bin/{snmpget,snmpwalk,snmpset} commands.  The only exception
may be if you do a MIB variable query from xnmbrowser2 (the SNMPv1/v2
MIB browser), but I haven't tested it with a sniffer.

A related, but somewhat orthogonal issue is that of MIB files.
NetView doesn't require that load MIB files, but they can be helpful
in letting you use the GUI to browse MIBs, query values, and use the
Data Collection and Thresholds tool (xnmcollect).  An imperfect
analogy is that you don't need to run DNS or make entries /etc/hosts
so long as you're happy typing IP addresses.  THe same is true with
OID numbers and MIB files--you don't need to load the MIBs to use the
OID's. 

Network devices that have SNMPv2 agents may ship with their MIB files
in SMIv2 format.  Such files can only be loaded into NetView's
"SNMPv1/v2" mib hierarchy (stored in /usr/OV/conf/snmpv2mib*).
xnmcollect's GUI, however uses the SNMP (v1) mib hierachy (stored in
/usr/OV/conf/snmpmib*) exclusively, but so long as you know the OID
number of the element and can retrieve values from it using
/usr/OV/bin/snmpget and snmpwalk, then you can still use the
thresholds tool if you hand-edit /usr/OV/conf/snmpCol.conf.


Best Regards, 
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