Customer Reviews

Essential SNMP, Second Edition

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have been doing network/router/system administration for about 3 years, and I have never really had the time/opportunity/need to do SNMP. Our network grew to be very large very quickly (sites in africa, england, germany, canada, america) and it became neccesary to use SNMP to ease the administration somewhat. I first bought "A practical guide to SNMPv3 and Network Management" and could barely get past page 8 before I was totally lost. So I came back looking for "21 days" or "SNMP for dummies" book of which there are none. I found this book which recommends a good grasp of TCP/IP and that is about it. I have found this book to be the best book out there for someone with 0 to little experience with SNMP. It brought me all the way from ground 0 knowledge of SNMP to managing a network of about 100 routers with SNMP, including detecting DoS attacks, processor overload, interface changes, config changes etc.

I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a practical SNMP managed network, beginner or advanced.

This book is intended for people wanting to understand how to use SNMP such as adminstrators or managers. I bought this book because of its coverage of various NMS systems (such as HP OpenView NNM) and SNMP Agents.

The book provides coverage of SNMP and its operation in two chapters. It covers NMS configuration, Agent configuration, extensible Agents, MRTG. Also useful is its coverage of open source software for SNMP: Net-SNMP, SNMP Perl module, and MRTG.

The book could use more coverage of other open source and freely available SNMP software.

All in all, a good book. As usual, you can trust O'Reilly.

This book is good up till you get 1/4 of the way through it. The first quarter of the book is good and it goes over general SNMP stuff then history different versions etc. The last 3/4 of this book cover configuring proprietary monitoring systems like open view and solar winds.

I dont care about open view.. or solar winds.. i wanted to learn about snmp... not some vendors software package. Im suprised that this got published with such a general title.. when really the book is an snmp intro, followed by how to setup a proprietary monitoring tool.

Essential SNMP, 2nd Ed (ES2E) fills a gap in being a modern book about an important management protocol. SNMP is used extensively by network management stations (NMS) like Nagios, which is now the subject of two independent books. E2SE does a good job covering SNMP issues important to administrators and NMS users. However, the book's organization and subject matter could be improved in the 3rd edition.

Initially I thought it was helpful to include Tethereal output of SNMP messages, but I realized it was very wasteful to include all of the packet headers above SNMP itself (i.e., Ethernet, IP, and UDP). Many pages could be removed, and the readability improved, by removing unnecessary material. The authors should also bold or highlight important parts of those messages, and maybe add inline callouts of descriptions to point out important parts of the protocol.

I liked E2SE because it gave balanced coverage to SNMP v1, v2c, and v3, more or less. The chapter on v1 and v2c (Ch 2) explored those protocols using tools bundled with Net-SNMP. Unfortunately, the same is not true for the chapter on v3 (Ch 3). This was disappointing, because SNMP v3 is most likely to confuse readers.

With respect to tools, I don't think it makes sense to use Net-SNMP apps to demonstrate SNMP in Ch 2, but wait to explain Net-SNMP in Ch 6. Sure, there is an appendix on Net-SNMP, but I think it would have made more sense to guide the reader through a setup of a Net-SNMP agent, and then use snmpget, snmpwalk, snmpset, and snmptrap to communicate with snmpd and snmptrapd. This would explain basic SNMP operations in a safe, non-production environment. With that base, readers could then learn about commercial NMS, perhaps taking a close look at programs like OpenView (covered extensively in ES2E).

I wish the book had offered more help with error messages. I frequently found myself searching the Web for help with configuring various components on Net-SNMP. I blogged much of my wanderings because SNMP ends up not being as "simple" as one might expect.

Overall, I think ES2E is a good book for those who want to learn more about SNMP. I would like to see the third edition address these concerns, especially with respect to SNMP v3 operation.

I hadn't seen a new book on SNMP come out in some time, and the older ones I had read were so abstract and unhelpful that I was reluctant to try another one. This book, though not perfect, is much better than the older books I have looked at on the subject. For one thing, it just didn't dive into the subject with a bunch of confusing graphs and object trees assuming I already knew the big picture.

Chapter one is just a general introduction to SNMP and network management. Chapter 2 goes into details on both SNMPv1 and SNMPv2. It talks about how SNMP sends and receives information, how to read MIB files, and about SNMP communities. It looks in detail at three MIB's - MIB-II, Host Resources, and RMON. MIB-II is a very important management group because every device that supports SNMP must also support MIB-II, thus objects from MIB-II are used in examples through the whole book. Chapter 3 introduces SNMPv3, which addresses the security problems present in v1 and v2.

Next the book introduces the idea of a network management architecture. It stresses that you need a plan that helps you use Network Management Stations (NMS's) effectively in order to effectively manage your network. This section includes how to properly choose your hardware and what questions you need to ask yourself. Next the book discusses actually installing and running your software. Specifically HP's OpenView Network Node Manager and Castle Rock's SNMPc Enterprise Edition are discussed. Included are detailed instructions along with screenshots of the application. Next there are instructions on how to configure SNMP agents. You are walked through some standard configuration parameters plus some advanced parameters that sometimes crop up. Once again there are plenty of screen shots to help you know you are on the right path.

Now that you've been walked through the configuration of your system and the installation of software, the book shows you how to use the three basic SNMP operations of snmpget, snmpset, and snmpwalk. A group of Perl scripts are shown that set, get, and walk objects. Next HP OpenView and Net-SNMP are used to perform the same operations from the command line. A third alternative is demonstrated that uses OpenView's graphical MIB Browser. Next is a discussion of how to set up SNMP to poll your devices at certain intervals and to set thresholds that require action if crossed. Again Perl scripts enter the discussion for configuring this set-up. SNMPc and OpenView screen shots show you how to configure this using graphical interfaces, and what to expect. Next the book discusses traps, which are how an agent sends a monitoring station asynchronous notification about certain key conditions that may require action. The book demonstrates how to handle traps using OpenView and Perl scripts. Next the book shows how to read, configure, and even define your own traps.

The book now turns to the problem of agents that need to be extended in their abilities. The book discusses the answer to this problem - extensible SNMP agents - and three of them in particular - the OpenView, Net-SNMP, and SystemEdge agents. Next are some interesting scripts for automating common system administration tasks. Issues covered by these little scripts include determining who is logging into your machine, a port monitor, service monitoring, and switching port control, among others. There is then a discussion on MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher), a trend analysis tool that generates image files and whose output is viewable from a web browser. Complete instructions on installing and using the tool are given. The next tool discussed is RRDtool, which in network management will most likely be used to store and process data collected via SNMP. However RRDtool can be used for many diverse purposes that have nothing to do with computer networks. The last chapter in the book is an odd one on using Java with SNMP. Specifically, the book presents the Java SNMP API known as SNMP4J. It doesn't really seem to add any functionality other than being an alternative for people who don't like to use Perl.

I liked this book very much. It had many good examples and it answered all of the questions I had previously had on SNMP starting from the beginning with what is SNMP and what can it do for you? I would highly recommend it to any network administrator who is planning on workng with SNMP.

Having a little familiarity with SMNP, I looked forward to reading this book. I wasn't disappointed as it's well-written and filled with excellent information, which I've always found to be true of O'Reilly books. What I enjoyed a lot about this book was its general look first off at what SMNP is, why it's important, SMNP managers and agents, how it in most cases works better with UDP as opposed to TCP, etc.

This book also describes the various types of Network Management Services architectures, the compatible hardware and network management software available, how to configure specific SMNP agents to monitor a specific device on a network, and how polling works, among other topics.

As always with O'Reilly books, there's a wealth of reference information at the back of the book (for example, Using Input and Output Octects, command line tools, and a list of SNMP RFC's to refer to for more information). If you're a sys admin or anyone else desiring to learn more about SMNP, this book covers a lot of important SMNP information.

This 230 page book with another 50 pages of appendices provides foundational knowledge about the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). SNMP, for those who have never heard of it, is an international standard protocol for managing IP devices. It is implemented in firmware that is included with virtually all enterprise networking gear and in software for most server OSes as well. This software is called an SNMP agent and it provides the ability to track hardware and OS activity, to notify a central network monitoring system or NMS when a predefined threshold is exceeded or an event occurs ("trap"), and to provide information to an NMS when queried. SNMP information is stored in a data structure called a Management information Base or "MIB". There is a wide range of possible information available through SNMP, but the most widely used is "MIB-II" which contains network interface status and statistics.

I first heard about this book shortly after it was published while I was working at Hewlett Packard where it was highly recommended reading for someone working with HP OpenView Network Node Manager (NNM). I put it on my "to do" list, but never got around to reading it until now, and I'm sorry I waited so long. This is an excellent book for teaching you the basics of SNMP and quite a good tutorial on HP's NNM as well. Even though I have worked with NNM intermittently for the past five years I still learned a few things NNM can do that I wasn't aware of. This gave me a lot of confidence in the author's knowledge of the subject matter.

The book logically progresses from describing what SNMP is, the structure of the information in SNMP, what a Network Management System (NMS) is, hardware considerations in SNMP management, NMS software and issues around polling, traps, and adopting SNMP to your specific environment. The appendices take a closer look at using MIB-II input and output octet counters, customizing HP NNM, Net-SNMP tools, SNMP support in Perl, RFCs relevant to SNMP, and SNMPv3.

I found that the authors provided a very balanced look at the potential of SNMP management. The book is full of good advice for how to go about setting up SNMP monitoring, describing both the pros and cons of this type of management. I liked the fact that they discussed a range of SNMP agents and NMS', from the free NET-SNMP and MRTG to enterprise solutions like HP OpenView, and some intermediate solutions like Castlerock's SNMPpc. The examples are good at demonstrating the concepts and possibly even useful code to download from the O'Reilly site to get you going with SNMP. I liked the fact that the authors usually provided the sample code in three flavours - net-snmp, HP NNM, and perl.

This book was published in 2001 and since then networks have evolved. Enterprise networks have become more complex with VLANs and more redundancy, new services, and higher level protocols like OSPF, HSRP, CDP, SIP, VoIP now in common use. The MIBs to understand these environments are proprietary so homegrown SNMP solutions are not as useful as they were in simpler times. Occasional SNMP exploits have resulted in many network managers disabling SNMP, even on internal networks, or disabling SNMP traffic between subnets. Also the plaintext transmission of SNMP's security mechanism known as the "community string" in SNMP v1 and v2c does not fit well in an increasingly hostile network environment. SNMP v3 addresses the community string issue, but vendor support for this protocol is still lacking. Even HP's NNM has SNMP v3 support as an extra cost 3rd party item.

In summary, I recommend this book to anyone with a need to do basic network or server monitoring. It is an eye opener for the potential of SNMP as a management tool. Be aware that for network devices, SNMP is provided by the device vendor, and most are still supporting version 1 or v2c where v3 is probably the minimum requirement in today's networks.

Most of the books in this series are very technical and go into serious details. This one reads like a compendium of owner's manuals. A really good book on SNMP is needed and this one is not it.

I came into this book knowing basically nothing about SNMP, and now I feel like an expert. The authors really know their stuff, and they convey it in a relaxed, personal manner that makes what could have been a dry subject entertaining as well as informative. Mauro and Schmidt have rich tech writing careers ahead of them. I couldn't recommend this book more strongly.

I pretty much hate SNMP. It's stems from not understanding it. This book has given me a grasp on some of the concepts, but has refered to a few things that I am supposed to already know. It's not for beginners.