2. Agent Functional Description

2 Agent Functional Description

The SNMP agent system consists of one Master Agent and optional Sub-agents.

The tool makes it easy to dynamically extend an SNMP agent in run-time. MIBs can be loaded and unloaded at any time. It is also easy to change the implementation of an MIB in run-time, without having to recompile the MIB. The MIB implementation is clearly separated from the agent.

To facilitate incremental MIB implementation, the tool can generate a prototype implementation for a whole MIB, or parts thereof. This allows different MIBs and management applications to be developed at the same time.

2.1 Features

To implement an agent, the programmer writes instrumentation functions for the variables and the tables in the MIBs that the agent is going to support. A running prototype which handles set, get, and get-next can