What is SNMP Walk?
SNMP, short for Simple Network Management Protocol, is an protocol through which the devices connected over a network can communicate with each other. SNMP walk is a method that is leveraged to receive multiple pieces of information from a device that runs on an SNMP network.
SNMP walk is an excellent method to gather data, especially in situations where a large amount of data is required from a device but the exact Object Identifiers (OIDs) aren’t known.
You can perform SNMP walks using a variety of network monitoring tools and utilities, such as SNMP walk in the command-line tool.
How Does SNMPWalk Work?
The SNMP walk tool enables users to fetch records from Management Information Bases, or MIBs.
SNMP walk is a command-line tool and is a part of the Net-SNMP set. Net-SNMP implements and leverages the IPv4 and IPv6 networks. SNMP walk runs by leveraging a specific type of SNMP protocol data unit: GetNextRequest.
The SNMP walk application sends out the GetNextRequest which enables it to collect information about different OIDs operating on the SNMP network. It works by bundling together several SNMP commands for multiple devices on a network, which saves you the effort of having to type multiple commands to get data from each OID on the network.
Using SNMP walk, it is easy to identify the devices on a network that are not working. Additionally, you can also use SNMP walk to discover the list of devices on the network that form a library of MIBs and support SNMP.
By using the data collected using SNMP walk, you can execute several troubleshooting tasks. For example, say that an SNMP walk fetches you the fan speed data of one of the devices on the network. It is then possible to set up a chain of SNMP commands that send a trap message when the temperature of a device rises and configure the manager to control the fan speed accordingly to keep the device temperature regulated.
How Can You Run SNMPWalk?
It is simple to install and run SNMP walk on your device.
If you are using Windows, you need to download the exe files and then run the file snmpwalk.exe to install the modules. If you are running on Linux, you can do the following:
- Ubuntu: Run the command apt-get install snmp
- Redhat/Fedora/CentOS: Enter the command yum install net-snmp-utils
Once you have the SNMP walk components installed, you can proceed to run it from the command prompt on your device. You need to type “snmpwalk” followed by the parameters of the operations you wish for it to perform.
For example, to perform an SNMP walk on a local host, you need to type:
snmpwalk -v1 -c public localhost
If you wish to view the list of parameters available with your version of SNMP, you can access the Help menu and view them using snmpwalk -h command.
What are The Use Cases of SNMPWalk?
There are several use cases for performing SNMP walk on network devices:
- It can be used to debug or troubleshoot issues with devices hosted on the SNMP network.
- You can use it to discover the information that a device has stored.
- It can be used to monitor the health and performance of the devices hosted on a network.