SNMP is considered today the most widely-used supervision standard protocol. But which are the alternative protocols, and why decide on SNMP? Are there known situations when different protocols really should be utilized or perhaps are even now being used? These are basic questions that many people try to ask every so often. This is the reason I'll make an attempt to provide answers to them currently, based around my personal 21 years experience with Element, Network and also Service Management. Be aware that the next few paragraphs should be used as something to think about when researching today's protocol alternatives.
The IETF introduced SNMP in the early 1980s and it became very quickly the most popular network management (nms) protocol. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21st century it started to become apparent that no matter what was first desired, SNMP has not been employed for configuring network elements, but had been primarily getting used just for network assurance, i.e. Fault Management and Performance Management.
Around two thousand and two, the Internet Architecture Board and vital members of IETF's network management network met up with network operators to go over the problem. The outcome of this discussion are really registered on RFC 3535. It seems operators were mainly utilizing proprietary Command Line Interfaces (CLI) to configure their equipment. This specific contained a variety of functions the operators favored, such as the undeniable fact that it was actually text-based, rather than the BER-encoded SNMP. On top of that, many equipment manufacturers didn't present the way to completely configure their devices by means of SNMP.
Simply as operators mostly liked to create scripts to help configure their particular network nodes, they realized that CLI was short on various ways. They were also surprised by the unknown dynamics in the result. The content and format of output was vulnerable to changes in ways unforeseen. At the same time, Juniper Networks came up with an XML-like management technique. This technique has been sent to the IETF and later given to a wider circle. Collectively, these incidents led IETF towards introduction of NetConf protocol which is anticipated to be much better in-line considering the demands of network operators and devices manufacturers.
With respect to Performance Management on routers/switches for IP, CISCO before long realized that a more compact protocol compared to SNMP was required to scale much better for performance collection on IP networks. Netflow initially introduced by CISCO has become a standard today (named IPfix) that has been implemented by many routers/switches Manufacturers.
The IETF introduced SNMP in the early 1980s and it became very quickly the most popular network management (nms) protocol. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21st century it started to become apparent that no matter what was first desired, SNMP has not been employed for configuring network elements, but had been primarily getting used just for network assurance, i.e. Fault Management and Performance Management.
Around two thousand and two, the Internet Architecture Board and vital members of IETF's network management network met up with network operators to go over the problem. The outcome of this discussion are really registered on RFC 3535. It seems operators were mainly utilizing proprietary Command Line Interfaces (CLI) to configure their equipment. This specific contained a variety of functions the operators favored, such as the undeniable fact that it was actually text-based, rather than the BER-encoded SNMP. On top of that, many equipment manufacturers didn't present the way to completely configure their devices by means of SNMP.
Simply as operators mostly liked to create scripts to help configure their particular network nodes, they realized that CLI was short on various ways. They were also surprised by the unknown dynamics in the result. The content and format of output was vulnerable to changes in ways unforeseen. At the same time, Juniper Networks came up with an XML-like management technique. This technique has been sent to the IETF and later given to a wider circle. Collectively, these incidents led IETF towards introduction of NetConf protocol which is anticipated to be much better in-line considering the demands of network operators and devices manufacturers.
With respect to Performance Management on routers/switches for IP, CISCO before long realized that a more compact protocol compared to SNMP was required to scale much better for performance collection on IP networks. Netflow initially introduced by CISCO has become a standard today (named IPfix) that has been implemented by many routers/switches Manufacturers.
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Finally, if you like to learn more, don't forget to read the following interesting posts: A History of SNMP and comparison with other protocols and What is the TMN Network Management model
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