HISTORY

The main people at the origin of the SNMP concept are :

At the begining in 1988, there was the need of an administration tool for TCP/IP network and most particularly for the Internet.

The starting point had been given by the IAB with the publication of the RFC 1052 in April 1988. This RFC is a requirement specification for the network management standard. It is entitled "IAB Recommendations for the Development of Internet Network Management Standards" and explain that the network management must :
  • Be as large as possible.
  • Have the wider diversity of implementation as possible.
  • Have the wider diversity of administration/management as possible.
  • Cover as much protocol layer as possible.

    From that point things are going faster. An important part of the concept were already known by previous development around routers notably SGMP (Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol).
    The following RFCs are the first documents dealing with SNMP published in 1988 :
  • RFC 1065 - Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based internets
  • RFC 1066 - Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets
  • RFC 1067 - A Simple Network Management Protocol

    This type of publication "RFC" is a very important point that explain the fast development of the SNM Protocol.
    After a previous study, a RFC is proposed as a status of standard. Then it normally becomes a "Draft Standard" after a six month period.

    At this point, there must be then at least two implementation of the protocol.
    After a four month period, if the IESG recommend it as a standard, then the IAB take the final decision to adopt the standard or not.

    MECHANISM OF IETF STANDARDISATION.
    Preliminary
    Draft
    Proposed
    Draft
    Draft
    Standard
    Standard
    ---\ At least
    6 months     		---\ At least
    4 months     		---\


    ISO and ITU-T ( International Telecommunication Union ) had in important influence on the SNMP with their will of convergence.

    The IAB wished that transition from one to the other architectures was as easy as possible. Finally, the synchronisation between the two protocols had been very difficult and the convergence plan based over CMOT (allowing TCP/IP management with CMIS/CMIP) has been dropped off and thus SNMP moves forward .
    Each protocol followed then his own development. The SNMP conception goes faster and the RFC had been re-write with new functions. The 1.0 version was reached in May 1991 with the followings RFC :

    RFC 1155 -
    Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based Internets Structure and Identification of Management Information Guidelines for Object Names
  • Describe how management information has been structured into a global tree.
  • Lays down some restrictions to keep the protocol simplicity.
  • Introduce the rules for assigning names to objects.

    RFC 1212 -
    Concise MIB Definitions
    Complete the RFC 1515 with technical definitions.
  • Improves on the definition techniques defined in RFC 1155.

    RFC 1213 -
    Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II
  • This memo defines the second version of the Management Information Base (MIB-II) to use with network management protocols in TCP/IP-based internets.
  • A listing of over 100 vars. Needed to keep the settings, the status and the statistics of the operating systems of the network.

    RFC 1157
  • A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
  • Define the messages that can be exchanged between the management station and the managed entity to read or update values.
  • Define the alarm messages (TRAP) send by the system in stress status.
  • Define the message format and details if the communication protocol.

    Different workgroup contribute to the development and the opening of the protocol by building MIBs for all types of network equipment (Bridge, Router, Hub, ASCII monitors, WAN interface, DS1, DS3, X25, Frame Relay, Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI...) and also vendors protocols.

    In November 1991 are published requirement for the integration of probes. This probe watch, do survey and capture passively the traffic on a segment of the LAN for a later analysis. It maintains statistics of the traffic, breakdown caused by protocol, source, destination and other criteria. A network manager with the monitor is able to set threshold in monitor and set the management station that must receive the alert messages.

    April 1993, SNMP V2 becomes a standard. It offers new features that complete a few the lack of the previous version such as security and authentication. This version is criticised because it introduce complexity and a failure of compatibility with V1.

    Finally in 1997, a merging group is created. Its main topic : create SNMP V3. There is also work in order to adapt multimedia protocol to network management, development around Java or new architectures and protocols (HMMP : Hypermedia Management Protocol).

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