7.9 Summary

Multiple management schemes exist for managing a communication device. SNMP, CLI, and HTTP based management are often used in switching/routing devices. An agent (SNMP, CLI, or HTTP) acts as the front end for the management operations by decoding the PDU or user command and translating it into a call to the protocol task. The call is to a low-level access routine in the protocol, which does a Get, Set, or Test of a variable. The agent-to-protocol interface can take place via procedure calls which can translate into internal events and messages.

Saving and restoring configuration is a very important part of a communications device. The configuration parameters are usually written to a specific area of RAM from where the image is compressed and stored locally or at a remote host. Restoration is the same sequence in the reverse order.