Knowledge Center > Tutorials

The SNMP Assistant is designed to provide value to network administrators running both the ipMonitor Network Monitoring software, and those running any number of other network management solutions.

While browsing through MIBs within the ipMonitor SNMP Center, you can scan SNMP-enabled devices on your network to discover whether certain MIB Objects are supported by a specific device.

Retrieved SNMP data is:

• Translated from ASN.1 numeric notation (computer readable) into named notation (human readable).
• Formatted using JavaScript and HTML.
• Displayed in a new browser window.

Before you can scan a device, you must download and launch the ipMonitor SNMP Assistant utility. To do so, follow the steps below:

1. Download the ipMonitor SNMP Assistant utility from the ipMonitor Support Portal:
   
   /downloads/2d101b4fe4d347c3893f769323192b37.aspx
2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to the location of your choice. The utility does not have to be located within the ipMonitor folder.
3. Run the ipmsnmpassist.exe file to launch the SNMP Assistant.

Once enabled, the SNMP Assistant icon will appear on your taskbar. It will also automatically be added to your Startup tasks.

Click the PDF icon to open a printable PDF version of this tutorial. It includes all the information found here, including images from the ipMonitor software, diagrams, and links to additional resources.

When you've located a MIB object within the SNMP Center that you want to test with one of your SNMP-enabled devices, proceed with the following:

1. Enter the IP Address or Domain Name of your device or application in the dialog box, and then click the Scan (or Walk) button.

Note: If the utility is not currently running, you will be asked to launch the SNMP Assistant before attempting to scan your network devices.

2. The IP Address or Domain name you entered in the dialog box will be passed to the SNMP Assistant along with a compact OID structure (already contained within the web page).The SNMP community text string, UDP Port and SNMP Protocol number last entered into the SNMP Assistant will be used to perform the scan. To change any of these settings, click on the appropriate field within the SNMP Assistant screen and enter new parameters.

3. Click the Scan button to start the scan.

The data returned by a scan allows you to quickly digest a large amount of operating information from the device or application. If the OID scanned represents a table, each row in the table will be enumerated and displayed.

For example, the following screen capture is the result data obtained by having the SNMP Assistant walk the 'ifEntry' table of a 24-port switch device.

Visual features of the formatted display include:

• Parameters are translated from ASN.1 numeric notation to named notation for readability.
• Tabular data can be formatted in either a Horizontal or Vertical layout by clicking the table icon at the top of the returned results.

For information regarding the various SNMP Monitors available within the ipMonitor Network Monitoring software, refer to the Monitors section of ipMonitor's Context-Sensitive Help system, and then select Monitor Types. The Context-Sensitive Help can be accessed by clicking the Help link located in the top right corner of ipMonitor's Administration web interface.

For information on other features and concepts related to those discussed in this article, refer to the following ipMonitor resources:

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Last Updated: August 31, 2005 | What did you think of this topic?