Supporting software is a grab-bag
that includes all sorts of things that are used in conjunction with
the software packages listed earlier. Some of these packages can be
used to write standalone SNMP applications. The rest of this section
outlines several supporting software packages. Most of these are
freely available and can be used with little or no previous
experience.
The Practical
Extraction and Report Language (Perl) is a versatile,
all-purpose scripting language that is the tool of choice for system
administrators and network engineers, among others. Both MRTG and
Cricket make use of Perl to perform their behind-the-scenes work.
Cons
Some people say that there are no cons to Perl. The most common
complaint about the language is that it's interpreted and not
compiled, like the C programming language.
This library can be used to develop your own SNMP applications. The
library is very easy to use, once you figure it out. The nice thing
about the package is that it comes with the source code to commands
such as snmpget, snmpset, and
snmpwalk, which can be used to see how these sorts
of operations are accomplished.
Cons
The documentation on how to use the library is poor to the point of
nonexistence.
A simple set of modules that can be
used to manage 3Com SuperStack II 3900/9300 and CoreBuilder 3500 LAN
switches. This can be a good start for management on a budget.
If you need to use C++
for SNMP application development, this is the package to get. You can
create powerful applications with minimal programming. This library
has been released into the open source community and is freely
available.
An
event-correlation and deduplication engine, used to cut down on the
management events that traditional NMS platforms tend to generate by
showing the end user only what she needs to know to fix network
problems. It is designed to receive events from NMSs such as OpenView
or NerveCenter, but it can receive events from almost any kind of
management source. Micromuse sells probes that can interface with
everything from popular NMS platforms to telephone switch equipment.
Cons
Requires a bit of initial setup (but after that it's easy to
use and maintain).
