SNMP Access Control

SNMP defines an access control mechanism similar to password authentication. Lists of authorized manager hostnames are defined in an access control list (ACL) stored in an ACL file on the agent side. There are no passwords, but logical community names may be associated with authorized managers to define sets of allowed operations.

The SNMP adaptor will perform access control if an ACL file is defined. Because SNMP is a connectionless protocol, the manager host and community are verified with every incoming request. By default, the file is not loaded and any SNMP manager may send requests.

The ACL file is the default access control mechanism in the SNMP protocol adaptor. However, you may replace this default implementation with your own mechanism. For example, if your agent runs on a device with no file system, you could implement access control lists through a simple Java class.