The SNMP Standard

SNMP can be viewed as three distinct standards:

• A Standard Message Format

  SNMP is a standard communication protocol that defines a UDP message format.

• A Standard Set of Managed Objects

  SNMP is a standard set of values (referred to as SNMP objects) that can be queried from a device. Specifically, the standard includes values for monitoring TCP, IP, UDP, and device interfaces. Each manageable object is identified with an official name, and also with a numeric identifier expressed in dot-notation.

• A Standard Way of Adding Objects

  A standard method is defined to allow the standard set of managed objects to be augmented by network device vendors with new objects specific for a particular network.