Defining SNMP MIB Objects Support

SNMP MIB Objects Supported in SmartMIB determines and dictates which management process scripts are to be applied and also what each management process script is permitted to poll from the managed network elements.

This is the case as SmartMIB delivers the necessary service to the SOSE by holding the list of Supported MIB Objects that the SOSE uses to build the SNMP request messages.

To view the list of Supported MIB Objects, from the Processes menu item; choose ‘supported MIBs’ as shown in the figure below:

This opens the ‘Supported MIB Objects’ List’ window which displays the supported MIB Objects by the corresponding name, administrator configured description, Object Identifier, and the Object’s data type.

To add a new MIB Object to the list of Supported MIBs, click on the ‘Add’ button to get the ‘Add New Object’ window shown in the figure below:

The MIB Object name and description could be entered by the administrator followed by the standard based Object’s Identifier as provided by the Vendor manufacturer or supplier of the particular managed element and according to the industry’s standard structure on management information.

The administrator could then define the MIB Object’s true data type to the SOSE parser, and could also define the display option of the particular object to the Graph Generator Engine (GGE) if the Object type is fit for a graphical display.

MIB Objects data types determine the nature of the corresponding Object’s value as reported by the SNMP Agent on the managed elements. However, this value could be interpreted differently or is representative of a different meaning than what is reported. This situation is typically the result of different implementations between the Agent and the Manager sides.

A good example of this mismatch is Status Objects. In the SNMP Agents, Status Objects are typically ‘Integer’ data types, at the Manager side each of the reported integer values have a clear and concise meaning to the network administrator where the integer value becomes much more cumbersome to analyse which makes the Object’s reported value less informative when displayed to a Report in its Integer format.

To configure the MIB Object meanings, the user needs to specify the value of the Object as will be reported by the SNMP Agent on the managed element in the ‘Value’ field and according to the specified ‘Object Type’. The user then enters the desired matching meaning in the ‘Meaning’ field and clicks on the ‘Add’ button in the ‘Object syntax meaning’ area of the form to add the new value-meaning pair.

The user can also modify or delete a specific value-meaning pair using the ‘Modify’ and ‘Delete’ buttons respectively.

Please Note:

As some MIB Objects could have many possible values, its difficult to predict or to configure a meaning for every value. Hence, the administrator may choose to pair CERTAIN values and their meanings but not necessarily all possible values.

The figure below shows an example of such Objects and the configured meanings per detected Integer value:

In this example the OspfAdminState MIB Object is reported by the SNMP Agent on the network element as an Integer with each integer value representing a different State for the OSPF Protocol. The meaning of the integer value is in fact more valuable to the administrator as it is more representable in the final Reports and Graphs for humans to relate to more easily.

MIB Objects support could be imported directly from a file in SmartMIB. This could be done through the ‘Import’ button of the ‘Supported MIB Objects’ List’ window.