Developing An SNMP Agent

Developing an SMNP Agent using the Java Dynamic Management Kit involves three steps:

• Generating Java code by running mibgen on the target SNMP MIB

• Filling in the access operations in the generated Java code

• Configuring the SNMP adaptor with the target MIB

  mibgen parses an SNMP MIB and generates the following:

  • an MBean representing the whole MIB

  • a class representing the metadata definitions for the MIB variables

  • classes representing SNMP groups/entries as MBeans (and a metadata class for each instance generated)

  • classes representing SNMP tables

  • classes representing SNMP enumerated types

  MBeans generated by mibgen need to be updated to provide the definitive implementation.

  SNMP agents developed with the Java Dynamic Management Kit are extensible in that MIBs can be added or removed during an agent's lifetime. They are open as SNMP is not the only protocol available and HTTP, HTML and RMI protocol adaptors can also be used to access the agent. They can be SNMP-only because the SNMP adaptor can be used alone and the MBean server is not mandatory.

  For more information regarding this development process, please refer to the Java Dynamic Management Kit Tools Reference Guide.