Talk:Simple Network Management Protocol

Internet Culture & History - Simplicity & Running Code

This article deals with the simplicity and absent features (missing complexity) of the SNMP remote management protocol. This question (Why missing?) is an entry point for a missing treatment of the deeper culture and history of this protocol, of the prime mover in its creation Marshall Rose, and of the Internet itself, which these people and that culture created fast and first among many attempts to move global telecommunications from circuit-switched to packet-switched network technology. Rose was also a prime mover in the creation of the Plain Old Postoffice (POP; Post Office Protocol) protocol used by millions to collect their mail.

Here is some inspiration to authors better qualified than I (steal whatever you want, this is Wikiland, plagiarism is free). From "How Anarchy Works -- On location with the masters of the metaverse, the Internet Engineering Task Force." by Paulina Borsook in Wired (quote) MIT professor Dave Clark, one of the grand old men of the Internet, may have unintentionally written the IETF anthem in his A Cloudy Crystal Ball/Apocalypse Now presentation at the 24th annual July 1992 IETF conference. Today, it's immortalized on T-shirts: "We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." Which might translate to, "In the IETF, we don't allow caucusing, lobbying, and charismatic leaders to chart our path, but when something out on the Net really seems to work and makes sense to most of us, that's the path we'll adopt." (/quote)

After establishing that it was intentional and historically characteristic that the SIMPLE Network Management Protocol be simple, this article can grow and go on to enumerate the development since the 1990s that have strained that simplicity and widening application of the SNMP: cheap memory, ever-larger firmware, protocols with ever more options, very long logs and tables (e.g., router tables, switch tables) that a larger network requires and larger memories can store, and a public and global network that now embraces bad actors.

Much can be taught to many from this little SNMP article. The SNMP is a small, concrete piece of the Internet and its history. We will surprise readers with how much makes sense and is learned. Jerry-VA (talk)

A list of SNMP Features would be useful

To help the newbie understand the 'why' of SNMP, it might be useful to start this article with a list of SNMP's features, such as

• provides a way to ask a device on a network to describe itself.
• information is organized by keyword and a corresponding value, for example you can ask a device for its 'sysLocation' and receive a response like 'Room 202A'.
• There is a single family tree (hierarchy) of keywords for all of SNMP, which makes it easy to attach new branches to this tree as new needs arise.

-- The preceding unsigned comment was added by someone whom the unsigned comment bot failed to catch.

I'd say more explanation than that is due, but your comment certainly explains more about it than the entire article. Usually the first paragraph of an article gives you a good general overview of the topic, but the first paragraph amounts to little more than what the first sentence alone says: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an "Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks." The quotation marks around the definition there are a nice touch: it's as if it's some sort of acknowledgement that even the author couldn't pin down an actual explanation of what the protocol does and didn't want to present such a vague definition as their own work.

So I continued to read the article, but never found an answer about what exactly the protocol does. It just keeps referring to what SNMP does as "management" without ever explaining what is meant by "management." So I'm left wondering, what does "managing devices" mean? I sometimes manage my network devices by unplugging cables, moving them to a different room, and plugging in new cables. Does SNMP do this for me? Sometimes I manage my network devices by assigning them IP addresses, does SNMP do that? Sometimes I manage devices by upgrading their firmware. Does SNMP do that? Sometimes I manage my router by adding new port forwarding rules. Does SNMP do that? "Manage devices" is a uselessly vague definition of what the protocol does, whatever that might be.

My only guess is that the protocol doesn't actually do anything, but rather, it's somewhat like TCP and UDP wherein you might use it to transfer information between devices, but exactly what data any device chooses to send, receive, or act upon, is entirely undefined, and depends on the software running on those devices. The only difference being that maybe it defines a standard format for that data, like "variable name goes here" and "an ID code for the data type goes here" and "the data goes here," but otherwise the protocol doesn't attempt to define what data should be sent or what actions should be taken in response to it. ...but, I really have no idea. The entire rest of the internet seems to be equally clueless about what this protocol actually does and what it might be used for and so I've been unable to figure anything out.

-- The one and only Pj (talk) 19:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Introduction to SNMP, with an overview of RFCs

RFC 3410 provides a valuable introduction to the SNMP framework, and an overview of the many RFCs relating to it.

Indefinite article

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User: 109.77.xx.xx and the indefinite article and Talk:XMPP#Please discuss changes to the indefinite article. Andrewa (talk) 15:08, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Addendum to Security Implications

There have been some additional security issues with SNMP that have come up lately, and should probably be listed. The vulnerability mentioned is related to autodiscovery, so it might be appropriate to make mention of it there as well. Link to the original paper: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot12/woot12-final14.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.107.99.224 (talk) 20:00, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

SNMPv2 is not a Draft

IMHO: SNMPv2c's RFC 1901 is not a "Draft Standard". It is at the experimental track and now is declared historic. The Draft Standard RFC 1908 has simply involved into RFC 3584.

OK, we can check the status of v2 docs here: at the RFC Editor. A handful of RFCs were designated Historic in 2002, but we should bear in mind that this was a specific action and isn't particularly common practise. Historic sends a fairly strong message (that the document is "not an Internet Standard of any kind", see [1]) and tends to happen when such a statement is intended. We can see that 1441, 1451 and 1901 are Historic. 1442 - 1444, 1448 - 1450, 1452 are Proposed Standards but have been obsoleted. 1902-1908 are Draft Standards which have been obsoleted. This sounds a bit incongruous but it is the intent of the IETF and we should reflect it: eg they have the maturity of DS but a newer, better standard exists (v3, which is a full STD).

Also we have an outstanding citation needed for about four years on "SNMPv1.5". looking at [2] (1992) and [3] (1994), the earliest drafts in each case, both are clearly called "SNMPv2". So I think it reasonable to lose this reference unless we can find an authoritative source for "v1.5" (say notes from a WG meeting or a draft by one of the authors). Behind The Wall Of Sleep (talk) 15:34, 24 February 2014 (UTC)