Answer to Question #165873 in Computer Networks for Ali

Question

1. Objectives

The main objective of this project is to let you know in more detail the design and description process of a Management Information Base (MIB). A simple case will be studied and treated with the formalism dictated by SMI-v2 described by RFC 1213.

2. Introduction

SMI-v2 uses only a very small subset of ASN.1 and has few templates to formally describe an information base.

RFC 1213 gives the formalism to use a description of a MIB that will be handled with the SNMP protocol. This project will therefore ask you to familiarize yourself with this RFC.

3. Presentation of the context and design of the MIB

You should design a private Management Information Base to supervise a host. The goal is to use SNMP to communicate the information to a network management application and to be able to automatically control the state, generate useful reports and possibly detect performance or security issues.

- What information would be required to manage a host?

- Distinguish between the simple variables and their types, and the tables necessary for this information base.

 

4. Formal description of the MIB

For this part, we will offer you a simplified MIB in the Appendix. According to an informal description, you must format this MIB in accordance with the SMI-v2 standard. Pay particular attention to how a table should be described, and to the DESCRIPTION field of each object.

- Name the module containing the MIB using the following format: studentName-StudentID-MIB,

- Choose the OID (Object Identifier) ​​of each element,

- Define a coherent tree structure,

- Use the ASN.1 syntax for the types of the elements.

-Write the complete MIB in text format using the SMI-v2 standard (refer to the tutorial of SMI)

 5. Appendix

The elements to consider for the design of the MIB are:

1- Percentage of free CPU "freeCPULoad"

2- Percentage of unallocated memory "freeMemoryLoad"

3- If the workstation is an "isWebServer" web server

4- The operating system version "version"

5- The old start date of the "lastHostReboot" system

6- The number of current users that are logged into the "usersNumber" workstation

7- A table of these users: "usersTable"

8- The user's login name, "userId"

9- The date of the opening of the session, "userLoginDate"

 

Answer 1

Management Information Base(MIB) is a database for managing information about devices on an IP data network. It is associated with Simple Network Management Protocol(SNMP) which is a protocol used for collecting and organizing information received from managed IP network devices such as routers, switches firewalls etc. An MIB compiler is used to parse information in the MIB.

Software that performs parsing is called MIB compiler. Objects in MIB are defined using a subset of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) known as Structure of Management Information Version 2.

SMIv2 and structure of management information:

It helps and adds to SMI v1, such as bit strings, counters, and network addresses. A network address represents an address from a particular protocol family. Bit string comprises of zero or named bit that’s specifies a value. Counters are certain integers that increase until a certain level then return to zero. In SMIv2 32bit and 64- bit counters are defined.

There are three types of SMI information modules;

• Exist MIB module.
• Capability statement.
• Compliance statement.

MIB Organization

The MIB hierarchy can be depicted as a tree with a nameless root. The tree levels are assigned to different organizations. The top-level MIB (Organization IDs)OIDs belong to different standards organizations, whereas, lower-level object IDs are allocated by associated organizations. This model permits management across all layers of the OSI model, extending into applications such as emails and databases.