Managing the SNMP Adaptor

Non-SNMP managers can also control the SNMP agent through the MBean of the SNMP adaptor. Like the other communications MBeans, the port and other attributes can be modified when the SNMP adaptor is stopped. You can also get information about its state, and stop or restart it to control when it is on-line. These administrative attributes and operations are defined in the CommunicatorServerMBean interface.

The SNMP adaptor server also implements the SnmpAdaptorServerMBean interface to define its operating information. The Snmp group of MIB-II defines certain statistics variables that SNMP agents must expose. For example, the SNMP adaptor provides methods for getSnmpInPkts and getSnmpOutBadValues. Non-SNMP managers can read these variables as attributes of the SNMP adaptor MBean.

The SNMP adaptor also exposes other operating information that is unavailable to SNMP managers. For example, the ActiveClientCount and ServedClientCount read-only attributes report on SNMP manager connections to this agent. The read-write BufferSize attribute lets you change the size of the message buffer when the adaptor is stopped. The adaptor MBean also exposes operations for sending traps or implementing your own security (see "Message-Level Security").