This network reaches from California to New York, and some branches over seas. In

this situation, anything can, and usually does go wrong, but it would be your job as a

system administrator to resolve the problem with it arises as quickly as possible. The

last thing you would want is for your boss to call you up, asking why you haven't done

anything to fix the 2 major systems that have been down for several hours. How do

you explain to him that you didn't even know about it? Would you even want to tell

him that? So now, picture yourself in the same situation, only this time, you were

using a network monitoring program. Sitting in front of a large screen displaying a

map of the world, leaning back gently in your chair. A gentle warning tone sounds,

and looking at your display, you see that California is now glowing a soft red in color,

in place of the green glow just moments before. You select the state of California, and

it zooms in for a closer look. You see a network diagram overview of all the

computers your company has within California. Two systems are flashing, with an X

on top of them indicating that they are experiencing problems. Tagging the two

systems, you press enter, and with a flash, the screen displays all the statitics of the two

systems, including anything they might have in common causing the problem. Seeing

that both systems are linked to the same card of a network switch, you pick up the

phone and give that branch office a call, notifying them not only that they have a

problem, but how to fix it as well.

Early in the days of computers, a central computer (called a mainframe) was

connected to a bunch of dumb terminals using a standard copper wire. Not much

thought was put into how this was done because there was only one way to do it: they

were either connected, or they weren't. Figure 1 shows a diagram of these early

systems. If something went wrong with this type of system, it was fairly easy to

troubleshoot, the blame almost always fell on the mainframe system.

Shortly after the introduction of Personal Computers (PC), came Local Area

Networks (LANS), forever changing the way in which we look at networked systems.

LANS originally consisted of just PC's connected into groups of computers, but soon

after, there came a need to connect those individual LANS together forming what is

known as a Wide Area Network, or WAN, the result was a complex connection of

computers joined together using various types of interfaces and protocols. Figure 2

shows a modern day WAN. Last year, a survey of Fortune 500 companies showed that

15% of their total computer budget, 1.6 Million dollars, was spent on network

management (Rose, 115). Because of this, much attention has focused on two families

of network management protocols: The Simple Network Management Protocol

(SNMP), which comes from a de facto standards based background of TCP/IP

communication, and the Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP), which

derives from a de jure standards-based background associated with the Open Systems

Interconnection (OSI) (Fisher, 183).

In this report I will cover advantages and disadvantages of both Common

Management Information Protocol (CMIP) and Simple Network Management

Protocol (SNMP)., as well as discuss a new protocol for the future. I will also give

some good reasons supporting why I believe that SNMP is a protocol that all network

SNMP is a protocol that enables a management station to configure, monitor, and

receive trap (alarm) messages from network devices. (Feit, 12). It is formally specified

in a series of related Request for Comment (RFC) documents, listed here.

RFC 1140 - IAB Official Protocol Standards

RFC 1147 - Tools for Monitoring and Debugging TCP/IP

Internets and Interconnected Devices

[superceded by RFC 1470]

RFC 1155 - Structure and Identification of Management

Information for TCP/IP based internets.

RFC 1156 - Management Information Base Network

Management of TCP/IP based internets

RFC 1157 - A Simple Network Management Protocol

RFC 1158 - Management Information Base Network

Management of TCP/IP based internets: MIB-II