2.6 References and Further Study

There are a number of books available that discuss SNMP in greater depth, including Essential SNMP (O'Reilly and Associates, 2001) by Douglas R. Mauro and Kevin J. Schmidt. Both TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 (Addison-Wesley, 1994) by W. Richard Stevens and Internetworking with TCP/IP (Prentice Hall, 2000) by Douglas Comer have sections with details about the SNMP protocol and associated standards.

RFCs 1155, 1156, and 1157, available from http://www.ietf.org/, are the original standards for SNMP. RFC 1157 defines SNMP itself, and RFC 1156 is the standard for MIB-I, now replaced by RFC 1213 for MIB-II. RFC 1155 defines the SMI and should now be read in conjunction with RFC 1212, which describes a concise format for use in a MIB.

Additionally, http://www.simpleweb.org/ has information on many MIBs, including a tool for browsing through MIB variables . It also has SNMP tutorials and references. Detailed information on using and writing MIBs can be found in the book Understanding SNMP MIBS (Prentice Hall PTR, 1996) by David Perkins and Evan McGinnis.