Most access to managed systems is carried over the Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP).
Suffice it to say that this is simple, providing <#2318#> get<#2318#>, <#2319#> set<#2319#>
operations and a <#2320#> get next<#2320#> operation to traverse a table of
information. It is not so much the access, as what information there
is to access, and what is then done with
that information that is interesting and difficult about network management.
While tools such as the MIB help deal with the <#2321#> data dictionary<#2321#> for
the management system, this only defines the types of managed
objects. The names/addresses of instances of these objects needs to
be stored in a database, and this can be distributed and accessed
through a conventional distributed system. We look at that next.