Addressing SNMP agents#
Sometimes SNMP managers can’t easily change community name to address particular simulated device instance as mention in the previous section. Or it may be useful to present the same simulated device to different SNMP managers differently.
Lite mode#
When running lite command responder, SNMP Simulator is not using SNMPv3 framework. That implies that SNMPv3 infrastructure can’t be used for agent addressing. In this mode, only SNMP v1 and v2c versions can be handled. The main reason for this lite/legacy mode support is higher performance.
In lite mode, SNMP Simulator attempts to find a .snmprec file to fulfill the request by probing files by paths constructed from pieces of SNMPv1/v2c request data. Path construction occurs by these rules and in this order:
self / <community> / <transport-ID> / <source-address> .snmprec
self / <community> / <transport-ID> .snmprec
self / <community> .snmprec
self .snmprec
The self component is just a constant which conceptually refers to the SNMP engine serving current request.
One of the use-cases is to serve requests with empty SNMP community name.
In other words, SNMP Simulator first tries to take community name, destination and source addresses into account. If that does not match any existing file, the next probe would use community name and destination address. The last resort is to probe files by just community name, as described in previous chapters.
Transport ID is an OID that also identifies local transport endpoint (e.g. protocol, local address and port Simulator is listening on). It is reported by the Simulator on startup for each endpoint it is listening on.
$ snmpsim-command-responder-lite \
--agent-udpv4-endpoint=127.0.0.1:1024 \
--agent-udpv6-endpoint='[::1]:1161'
...
Listening at:
UDP/IPv4 endpoint 127.0.0.1:1024, transport ID 1.3.6.1.6.1.1.0
UDP/IPv6 endpoint ::1:1161, transport ID 1.3.6.1.2.1.100.1.2.0
When mapping source-address into a file, the following transformation rules apply:
- UDP/IPv4:
192.168.1.1 remains 192.168.1.1
- UDP/IPv6:
fe80::12e:410f:40d1:2d13 becomes fe80__12e_410f_40d1_2d13
For example, to make Simulator reporting from particular file to a Manager at 192.168.1.10 whenever community name “public” is used and queries are sent to Simulator over UDP/IPv4 to 192.168.1.1 interface (which is reported by Simulator under transport ID 1.3.6.1.6.1.1.0), device file self/public/1.3.6.1.6.1.1.0/192.168.1.10.snmprec would be used for building responses.
SNMPv3 mode#
When using full Simulator, SNMPv3 framework is used and all SNMP versions (1, 2c, 3) can be handled.
The same filesystem mapping rules apply to SNMP community name, but also to SNMPv3 context name. The path to .snmprec file for fulfilling response is probed at these locations in the following order:
context-engine-id / context-name / transport-ID / source-address .snmprec
context-engine-id / context-name / transport-ID .snmprec
context-engine-id / context-name .snmprec
context-engine-id .snmprec
The context-engine-id component is taken from SNMP Context Engine ID field of the SNMP command request. If it happens to be equal to local SNMP engine ID value, then the constant literal self will be looked up on the file system instead. Conceptually, self refers to the SNMP engine serving current request.
One of the side-effects of supporting context-engine-id is to serve requests with empty SNMP context/community name (i.e. self.snmprec).
For example, to make Simulator reporting from particular file to a Manager at 192.168.1.10 whenever context-name is an empty string and queries are sent to Simulator over UDP/IPv4 to 192.168.1.1 interface (which is reported by Simulator under transport ID 1.3.6.1.6.1.1.0), device file self/1.3.6.1.6.1.1.0/192.168.1.10.snmprec would be used for building responses.