		  Internet Rover 3.0 SNMP Applications

Chapter 1.  SNMP Applications

1.1  snmpstats2 - SNMP statistics collection program

  The snmpstats2 application collects network statistics using SNMP and
stores the data using the /rtdata format described below.  

  The /rtdata format is a set of "data rules" describing how the data
files are named, and how the data is stored within the data files. 
This set of rules is uniform across all types of data we collect, and
allows us to build a complete statistics collection systems with all of
the following characteristics:

  any type of data

  any number of networks

  any number of nodes to query

  any number of objects to collect from each node

  a naming convention allowing the use of standard unix utilities to
synch,skulk and archive

  The data is stored in files named:

  /rtdata/<network>/<datatype>/<nodename>/<datename>.<datestr>

  where:

  network is the name of the network

  data type if the type of the data - in our case snmp

  nodename is the DNS name or a queryable IP address of the node

  dataname is the name of the collected object in this file 

  datestr is the day that the data was collected in the form YYMMDD

  Sample ifInUcastPkts.921203 file:


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	*
	*  raster -- Cannot represent as text.
	*
	********************************************

1.2  xdview4 - SNMP statistics viewing program

  Given the data rules defined in the above section, xdview4 provides
an easy mechanism to view SNMP collected data.  The xdview4 application
can be viewed as a SNMP statistics browser, allowing you to select any
number of nodes, from any network you monitor, and view the data of any
period of time you wish.  xdview4 uses the naming convention described
above to determine the number of hosts in a particular network, and the
types of SNMP objects available from the node.

1.3  snmptable2 - dump any number of tables from any number of hosts
useing SNMP.

  syntax:

  snmptable2 -h <host> [ -h <host> ... ] -c <community> <table1> <table2>
...

  snmptable2 does a series of get-next requests to retrieve the specified
MIB tables from any number of nodes.  The underlying code deals with
the retransmissions and timeouts, and presents the output to stdout.

  Example:


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	*
	*  raster -- Cannot represent as text.
	*
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Chapter 2.  The Fast SNMP API

  The Fast SNMP API uses the CMU SNMP code as a base, and provides an
interface that allows applications to specify many hosts and many objects
to retrieve in parallel.   Multiple objects are packed into single SNMP
packets for efficiency.    The code allows the application writer to
specify the number of retries, and the timeout between retries.  

  This code is used by the discovery rover program called getneighbors2, 
the Merit statistcis program called snmpstats2, the SNMP table dump
utility called snmptable2, along with several other ad hoc network
management programs.

