During 1993 11 RFCs were published defining revisions to SNMP. The first of these, RFC 1441 [Case et al. 1993], provides an introduction to SNMP Version 2 (SNMPv2). Two books also describe SNMPv2 [Stallings 1993; Rose 1994]. Two publicly available implementations already exist (see Appendix B.3 of [Rose 1994]), but vendor implementations probably won't be widely available until 1994.
In this section we describe the major differences from SNMPv1 to SNMPv2.
A new packet type get-bulk-request allows the manager to retrieve large blocks of data efficiently .
Another new packet type inform -request allows one manager to send information to another manager.
Two new MIBs are defined: the SNMPv2 MIB and the SNMPv2-M2M MIB (Manager-to-Manager).
SNMPv2 provides security enhancements over SNMPv1. In SNMPv1 the community name passed from the manager to the agent is a cleartext password. SNMPv2 can provide authentication and privacy.
As vendors start to provide SNMPv2-capable agents , management stations will also appear that can handle both. [Routhier 1993] describes extending an implementation of SNMPv1 to support SNMPv2.