The snmpbulkwalk command uses the GETBULK SNMP protocol feature to query for an entire tree of information about a network entity. This command can pack more objects into the packets by specifying “repeaters.” As a result, the snmpbulkwalk command is faster than the snmpwalk command.
Here is an example of the snmpwalk command with approximate start and end time stamps.
% date ; snmpwalk SNMP_agent entPhysicalTable > /dev/null ; date Sun Jun 30 18:15:38 EDT 2013 Sun Jun 30 18:16:46 EDT 2013
Here is an example of the snmpbulkwalk command performing the same operation. Notice that the snmpbulkwalk command is faster than the snmpwalk command.
% date ; snmpbulkwalk SNMP_agent entPhysicalTable > /dev/null ; date Sun Jun 30 18:19:19 EDT 2013 Sun Jun 30 18:19:38 EDT 2013