CODEWITHSUNDEEP
snmp
Usman
Usman

Reputation: 47

What is the difference between SNMP agent and subagent?

I am having issues of writing a very huge mib, as due to the senario that I have only one agent connected with many devices which do not have snmp. All Devices are sending same type of data to agent by pushing and agent is then sending snmp traps to SNMP manager. Also Manager is sending SNMP GETs to agent. I want to write a standard mib, which applies to every device and Manager has to send only some OIDs to get values against, not hundreds of OIDs. A very huge mib means a lot of branches.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 7211

Answers (1)

Tanner
Tanner

Reputation: 430

A sub-agent is an additional SNMP daemon that extends functionality of the master agent. Basically, OID sub-trees are assigned to the sub-agent(s). There are also a few other ways of extending functionality. For example, Here's a nice article on different ways of extending an Net-SNMP agent.

Some of the differences pointed out in the article include:

No configuration is needed for the master agent to accept an additional sub-agent. A sub-agent registers to the master agent the MIB modules (or part of them) it wants to take care of.

A sub-agent is decoupled from the master agent. It can run with a different identity or be integrated into another daemon to export its internal metrics, send traps or allow remote configuration through SNMP.

AgentX protocol can be carried over TCP. Sub-agents can therefore run on a foreign host or in a jailed environment.

64bit types are fully supported. Traps are also supported.

From what I can understand, you have remote devices pushing data to an agent, who in turn needs to be able to process and return this data to an SNMP manager using SNMP traps and/or SNMP gets. One thing to keep in mind is that your SNMP agent may be blocking when processing the incoming data. A sub-agent could be helpful in taking care of this work independently.

In regards to having a large amount of branches to cover each device, a table could be used. Depending on what kind of data your sending, bit fields can also be useful. Defined bitfields can be used to send large amounts of information on one device via one transaction.

Upvotes: 2

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