A Study of the Behaviour of the Simple Network Management Protocol

Abstract

The long-standing dominance of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), in its various flavours (though particularly the original SNMPv1) is being challenged by the development of agent-based (and more specifically mobile-agent based) network management support. One of the criticisms of SNMP is that it suffers from a common failing of such client-server based paradigms, namely the performance problems caused by all traffic being directed to and from a single location (the network management platform). The behaviour of such client-server applications has been explored through the use of the OPNET simulation system, populating the model using data collected from a study of the way a network management platform is used both to monitor a properly-functioning network and to collect information in response to fault situations. Initial results are presented for version 1 of SNMP showing the behaviour of the resultant system over a network configuration which includes both local and wide area network links.

Comparing the performance of SNMP and Web services-based management

“…In literature several papers can be found that investigate the performance of SNMP [8], compare the performance of SOAP to other middleware technologies [9], analyze the performance aspects of SOAP processing [10], and compare the performance of different SOAP and Web services toolkits [11]. This section discusses a number of publications that focus specifically on the performance of Web services for network management.…”

SNMP Traffic Analysis: Approaches, Tools, and First Results

“…RELATED WORK Several recent papers discuss the performance of SNMP [3]- [5], [7], [8], [16]. This work is complementary as it aims at providing empirical data about the usage of SNMP in production network.…”

“…There have been several publications in the recent past dealing with the performance of SNMP in general [3], the impact of SNMPv3 security [4], [5], or the relative performance of SNMP compared to Web Services [6]- [8]. While these papers are generally useful to better understand the impact of various design decisions and technologies, some of these papers lack a strong foundation because authors typically assume certain SNMP interaction patterns without having experimental evidence that the assumptions are correct.…”

SNMP Trace Analysis Definitions

“…The impact of security protocols on SNMP performance has been studied in [12,13,14]. Some authors have formulated models for the SNMP protocol [15,16].…”