Simple Network Management Protocol
[refer to RFCs, Tnm/Scotty/TkInEd, MIB Smithy SDK, SilverCreek, other Tcl software, articles, ...]
BOOK How to Manage Your Network Using SNMP
A recent news:comp.lang.tcl message [[email protected]] claims that built in support for SNMP is something missing from Tcl that is built in for Perl and/or Python. Is this true? The posting also lists as missing things like syslog support, Windows window events, COM support, and Expect for windows. I know this latter is in the works. He also says this kinds of support is required for System administration. CL's answer: ugh, no. That is, unless a miracle has happened, the Python and Perl stories for SNMP are not pretty.
The "Simple" in SNMP is engineering-speak. David T. Perkins has justly estimated that "the cost of developing a 'commercial grade EMS' element management system, the cost is probably $500K to $1.5M for a basic EMS." His explanation applies to challenges of application development far beyond network management, though: "Why is it so hard and expensive to develop an EMS? It is because there are really several products that you need to develop for different 'customers' that have different requirements. The customers are:
1) the viewers of demos (at trade shows or one-on-one for
potential customers). EMS needs to demonstrate key attributes
of product. Doesn't need to scale. Needs to be very
responsive and easy to move around. Standalone.
2) so the potential customer wants to try your product in
his lab. The EMS should ideally have 'wizards' that guide
the initial configuration. Make basic trouble shooting easy.
Doesn't need to scale. Standalone.
3) Potential customer want to use in small field trial.
(different set of attributes)
4) Customer want to roll out. EMS now has no graphical display,
since it needs to roll up data and provide it to an [NMS]
that has the display. Must scale. Must be stable."MJ - For a rudimentary SNMP parser using tcllib's asn package see SNMP parser.