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SNMP for the Public Community
by Williams Technology Consulting Services |
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View at: 800x600 or
higher
Last Update: Sep 15, 2000 |
Your
support site for SNMP, Windows 9x/NT/2000, NetWare and MRTG |

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Welcome
to SNMP4tPC!
(no frames version)
You may have heard some things about Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP), and
wondered what it was, or how it can provide you with performance information and let you
remotely manage your network servers, routers, hubs, switches, etc., right?
Or... maybe you are trying to get SNMP working for either your Windows 95/98, NT/2000 or NetWare servers,
but are getting frustrated by how close you seem to be, but you can't quite get it!
Maybe you are using

to monitor your network, and would like to include servers
and workstations instead of just network
devices.
Well, it was out of my frustration in finding any
decent support (either from Microsoft or Novell) in this area that I decided to put my own
web together. Despite its acronym, SNMP
is not exactly simple! In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how much of a black art
implementing and using SNMP seems to be. For all it's ubiquity (almost all of the
major vendors support SNMP), the information you need to get it installed and running
properly just doesn't seem to be too easy to find. My goal is to provide you with
that information!!
With information you can get here, there is no
reason that you can't soon be using SNMP to monitor critical server and network
performance indicators from a variety of systems!
Table of Contents

To explore this web, click a button in
the table below.



This site will likely save you days of research and
frustration! For eample, if you are looking to install SNMP and collect Windows NT
performance statististics over the network using an SNMP Network Management Station (NMS),
you can now accomplish it completely in less
than an hour!!
If you were to start from scratch, you would have
to purchase the NT Resource Kit, read about the MS SNMP implementation, figure out how
perf2mib and mibcc works, modify the (rather sparse) sample they provide, and test, then
retry, test, then retry, and so on and so on. I know! I've done it!
Since June of 1999, this site has helped thousands of people
sucessfully implement (and use) SNMP on the major MS platforms and Novell NetWare!
In addition to SNMP installation and
implementation support, this site provides help for those who want to take SNMP one step
farther and do something with it! Not
just that, but at minimal or no ca$h outlay! No Kidding! It just takes time to
set it up. And hey! You've got nothing but time, right?) NOT!!

, the
, is a freeware tool that supports the collection and display (in HTML
pages) of SNMP statistics, thereby enabling you to monitor usage patterns over daily,
weekly, monthly and yearly periods.
Once you have SNMP properly installed and running,
and MRTG happily collecting performance information, you can then build your own
HTML-based Network Monitoring System.
Correctly configured, almost any device that supports SNMP can be monitored my MRTG.
Routers, hubs, switches, workstations, servers, UPSs' and more can all be accessed by
MRTG.
This kind of information can be particularly handy
should you find yourself in the position of justifying a LAN, WAN or system upgrade or
need to diagnose a network bottleneck. Ya just can't argue with cold, hard facts!
Sounds Cool, eh? And wouldn't it be
neat to do something like send an email message, page a technician or run a program if one
of those statistics reached a threshold value?
Say, low disk space for example? Or high network throughput? Well you can do
THAT too with MRTG using thresholds!
Here are just a few comments from people who have downloaded SNMP4NT and SNMP4NW.
I removed peoples' names to protect their privacy
- "I want to thank you for a great
and informative site, that was VERY helpful with a project I'm working on."
- "You are to be commended on this
website. It is fantastic! I have found nothing even close
to providing the information and details on SNMP for the Windows
platform."
- "Thanks for a great web site! It
made it much easier for me to understand how to get the SNMP stuff working on a couple of
NT and Novell servers I wanted to monitor."
- "I found your site a few weeks ago, and
really enjoy the information about SNMP. I'm amazed by the completness you've
reached in the public information you're publishing."
You will also find useful links to free and commercial monitoring software, SNMP resources ,
troubleshooting tips, MIBS and more! Check it out!
If you do find this site to be useful, please
recommend it to a friend or colleague, and consider showing your
appreciation!
This site is primarily focused on SNMP,
and its implementation in Windows and NetWare environments.
I want to be able to add better Linux SNMP details
soon, but am finding it difficult to get a system to install it on.
I am slowly putting together a PII/266 system
(just need RAM and a hard disk now), and once I get it going, I will get around to
it. Meanwhile I will just try to provide links to worthy sites. I will be
posting the results here.
If you have information about
configuring SNMP on Red Hat and you don't mind sharing, would you email it to me? I will credit you for your documentation (and link
to your site if you have one).
Want to link to my site? If you like what you see and would like to link
to this site, please use the following information, and send me an email letting me know.
Thanks for dropping by! If you were helped by the information I am providing
here, or find an error in what I have to say, or have something to add, I would appreciate
hearing from you (really!). My goal is to try and make this Web a tool that can be
used to implement SNMP, MRTG and system monitoring fast and efficiently.

Bye! Thanks for dropping by!

Garth
garth.williams@wtcs.org
Disclaimer: This site is my way of helping the Internet Community by
providing information about SNMP, how it works and how to get it working. While I
endeavour to make sure that what you find here is accurate (I use almost everything you
find here), I will accept no responsibility should anything
happen to your system/environment as a result of information or programs collected from
this site.
BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM BEFORE
APPLYING ANY MODIFICATIONS!
Be assured however, that I
don't just slap up a new release without making sure it is working. Prior to
submitting files for download I ALWAYS test, on the Web Server itself (AMD-Athlon XP1700,
Windows 2000 Advanced Server/SP3, IIS5), my IBM ThinkPad notebook (Windows 2000 Server/SP3) and my Kids Backup Domain
Controller (486DX4/100, NT4 Server-SP5). I also use the PERFMIB.MIB in several production
systems where I work, and my MRTG is always the most current.
Please feel free to email me if you
have a question or two. I will do my
best to answer. I am not on the IETF, and I do not eat, drink and breathe SNMP, so
there's lots of things I don't know about it, but Hey! Running this site helps me learn,
too!
If you are interested in purchasing one or both of
these fine domain names, please send an email to domains@wtcs.org.
This Web is Copyright
(1999-2000), by Garth K. Williams
To report web-related issues, please email the
webmaster at webmaster@wtcs.org
