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How to Get Better Visibility of Your SNMP Alarms

Previous Page: The RFC MIB
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There's a big difference between basic alarm monitoring and intelligent alarm management. Any basic system will give you some kind of notification of an alarm. But simple status reports don't provide effective full visibility of your network.

Automated Correction

Your staff can't hover around a screen watching for alarms with their full attention 24/7. A simple system cannot get alarm information to the people who can correct problems quick enough to make a difference. And some problems require immediate action far faster than any human being can respond.

Intelligent Notification

An intelligent alarm management system won't just tell personnel there's a problem; it will locate the problem, provide instructions for corrective action, route alarm information directly to the people who need it, and, if possible, correct the problem automatically. Advanced features like these can make the difference between a minor incident and major downtime.

If you want these features, you need the T/Mon NOC Remote Alarm Monitoring System. T/Mon is a multiprotocol, multifunction alarm master with advanced features like programmable custom alarms, automatic alarm correction, e-mail and pager alarm notification and more.

To learn more about T/Mon, call 1-800-693-0351 today to register for a live Web demonstration or register on the Web at:
www.dpstelecom.com/webdemo.


The MIB objects you need to know

From the perspective of a telemetry manager, what you need to know from the MIB is:
1. What other RFC MIBs you need to support this device
2. What event reports (Traps) the device can send to the SNMP manager
3. What information you can request from the device (the SNMP equivalent of an alarm poll)
4. What characteristics of the device you can control via SNMP

RFC MIBs

The first thing you should look for in the MIB is what RFC MIBs are required to support this device. The necessary RFCs will be called out in the IMPORTS line at the beginning of the MIB.

Traps: Event Reports

For telemetry purposes, the MIB elements you're most interested in are what Traps the device can send. Traps are often described as alarms, but it's better to think of them as event reports.
When a Trap is called out in the MIB, it means that the device is configured to generate a report whenever the element listed changes state. This doesn't mean that the event is necessarily important. Many Traps are merely status messages.

In SNMP v1 MIBs, Traps are always designated with the text label TRAP-TYPE. Here's an example from the MIB for the DPS Telecom NetGuardian RTU (Remote Telemetry Unit):

dpsRTUp8005Set TRAP-TYPE
ENTERPRISE dpsRTU
VARIABLES { sysDescr, sysLocation, dpsRTUDateTime,
dpsRTUAPort, dpsRTUCAddress, dpsRTUADisplay, dpsRTUAPoint, dpsRTUAPntDesc, dpsRTUAState }
DESCRIPTION "Generated when discrete point 5 is set."
::= 8005

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