SNMP enables network administrators to manage network efficiency, find and solve network problems, and plan network growth. The network management system that receives random messages (and event reports) through SNMP knows that there is a problem in the network.
The predecessor of SNMP is Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol (SGMP), which is used to manage communication lines. Subsequently, people made great changes to SGMP, especially adding SMI and MIB which conform to the definition of Internet. The improved protocol is known as SNMP.
SNMP has the following technical advantages:
Based on the standard protocol of TCP/IP Internet, the transport layer protocol generally adopts UDP.
Automated network management. Network administrators can use SNMP platform to retrieve information, modify information, find faults, complete fault diagnosis, plan capacity and generate reports at nodes on the network.
Shield the physical differences of different devices and realize the automatic management of products from different manufacturers. SNMP only provides the most basic function set, which makes the management task relatively independent of the physical characteristics and actual network types of managed devices, thus realizing the management of devices from different manufacturers.
Simple request-response mode is combined with active notification mode, with timeout and retransmission mechanism.
There are few message types, simple message format, convenient analysis and easy implementation.
SNMPv3 version provides authentication and encryption security mechanisms, as well as access control functions based on users and views, which enhances security.