Chapter 5Fetching Simple Network Management Protocol data
SNMP is a ubiquitous network protocol that is used by the network routers, such
as switches, servers, and so on, for communicating the device's configuration,
performance data, and the commands that are meant for the control devices.
Although SNMP starts with the word simple, it's not a simple protocol. Internally,
each device's information is stored in a sort of a database of information called the
management information base (MIB). The SNMP protocol offers varying levels of
security depending on the protocol version number. In SNMP v1 and v2c, the data is
protected by a pass phrase known as the community string. In SNMP v3, a username
and a password are required for storing the data. And, the data can be encrypted
with the help of SSL. In our example, we will use the v1 and v2c versions of the
SNMP protocol.