Net-SNMP is a suite of software for using and deploying the

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

protocol (v1, v2c and v3 and the AgentX subagent protocol). It supports

IPv4 Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the first version of the Internet Protocol (IP) as a standalone specification. It is one of the core protocols of standards-based internetworking methods in the Internet and other packet-switched networks. ...

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communication protocol, communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic ...

, IPX, AAL5,

Unix domain socket A Unix domain socket (UDS), a.k.a. local socket, a.k.a. inter-process communication (IPC) socket, is a communication endpoint for exchanging data between processes executing in the same Unix or Unix-like operating system. The name, ''Unix domain ...

s and other transports. It contains a generic client

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

, a suite of

command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

applications, a highly extensible SNMP agent,

perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

modules and python modules.

Distribution

Net-SNMP is housed on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

and is usually in the top 100 projects in the SourceForge ranking system. It was the March 2005 SourceForge Project of the Month. It is very widely distributed and comes included with many operating systems including most distributions of

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

, Solaris, and

OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. It is also available from the Net-SNMP web site.

History

Steve Waldbusser of CMU started a freely available SNMP tool kit in 1992. The package was later abandoned by CMU and Wes Hardaker at

UC Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

renamed it to UCD-SNMP and extended it to meet the network management needs of the Electrical Engineering department there. Eventually Mr. Hardaker left the university and realized that the project was now network wide and thus renamed it to Net-SNMP to reflect its distributed development.Net-SNMP History
/ref> The roots of the Net-SNMP project are long and a full description can be found on th

page.

SNMP Applications Included With Net-SNMP

Snmpget

The command ''snmpget'' uses the snmpget application to retrieve information associated with a specific object identifier (OID) from a target device.

Example

An example of ''snmpget'' usage (this will retrieve a specific OID 'sysUpTime' under the community string 'demopublic', with 'test.net-snmp.org' as the host name of the agent to query:

Snmpwalk

The command ''snmpwalk'' uses the SNMP GETNEXT request to query a network for a tree of information. An object identifier (OID) may be given on the command line. This OID specifies which portion of the object identifier space will be searched using GETNEXT requests. All variables in the subtree below the given OID are queried and their values presented to the user. If no OID argument is present, snmpwalk will search the subtree rooted at SNMPv2-SMI::mib-2 (including any MIB object values from other MIB modules, that are defined as lying within this subtree).

Example

An example of ''snmpwalk'' usage (this will retrieve all of the variables under the ''system'' OID):

References

{{Reflist

Application layer protocols Internet protocols Internet Standards Multi-agent network management software Software using the BSD license System administration Free network management software Internet Protocol based network software