SNMP can be helpful for managing large networks, and some router manufacturers are including SNMP functions in their routers, most notably Linksys. You’ll need to use some sort of SNMP utility to capture and read the generated messages, however. Linux and Unix users won’t have much of a problem finding SNMP Trap utilities, but Windows and MacOS users may need more help.
SNMP Software
3COM’s Transcend Network supervisor [Free]
[OS:Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT 4.0]Discovers SNMP devices on your network and monitor messages from them. Also can map your network.
BTT Software’s SNMP Trap Watcher [Free]
[OS:Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0]
Simple Trap logger, with some filtering capability
Dartware’s SNMP Watcher [30 day demo. $99]
[OS:MacOS System 7 or later, and either MacTCP version 2.0.6 or later, or Open Transport version 1.1 or later ]Basic SNMP MIB Browser.
snmptraplogd 1.0-6.1 [Free]
[Linux ]This package contains a configurable snmp trap daemon. The output of this snmp daemon may be specified via a configuration file and written to a logfile or to the syslog daemon.
Download: http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/net/snmptraplogd.html
(Thanks to Alex Dukat!)
NET-SNMP [Free]
[Linux, other “*nix”]Nice all-round SNMP packages for “*nix” users is former ucd-snmp package in its current development as NET-SNMP. Its homepage is:
[Thnx Mark McCutcheon!]
Accton’s AccView/Open (SW6102) [Free]
[OS:Windows 95, 98, other Win?]
Suite of SNMP applications. Not well documented or implemented, but has many modules.
Solarwinds Professional [$325]
[OS:Windows 95, 98, other Win?]
Suite of newwork management and discovery tools. Not all are SNMP based.Download: http://solarwinds.net/Download-Tools.htm
Loriot [Free] [Thnx Normal Miller!]
[OS:Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000]
GUI based SNMP manager. Professionally done and lots of features.Download: http://www.llecointe.com/downloads.html
- Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) [Free] [Thnx Walt Guimbellot!]
[OS:Unix, Linux and Win32; view compatibility list]
SNMP tool for measuring bandwidth, trending, and it can also be used to graph any two variables. Binaries and source are available.Download: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/
SNMP Websites
SimpleWeb provides links and information on network management, including software, RFCs and tutorials. The focus is on SNMP and Internet management, but people interested in other management technologies will also find interesting information.
Maintained by the Telematics Systems and Services management group (TSS) of the University of Twente (the Netherlands), in collaboration with Jürgen Schönwälder of the TU Braunschweig (Germany).
Software section has a nice Search tool, that lets you search by OS and whether something is free.
Another SNMP links site, put up by Pierrick Simier. Nice to look at, but Search tool is not as helpful as SimpleWeb’s.
