About the SNMP Management Information Base

The SNMP Management Information Base (MIB) contains the essential objects that make up the management information for a device. The Internet TCP/IP MIB, commonly referred to as MIB-II, defines the network objects to be managed for a TCP/IP network and provides a standard format for each object.

The MIB is structured as a hierarchical object tree divided into logically related groups of objects. For example, MIB-II contains the following groups of objects:

Each object of the MIB is identified by a numeric object identifier (OID) and each OID can be referred to by its text label. For example, the system group contains an object named sysDescr, which provides a description of the device. The sysDescr object has the following object identifier:

iso.org.dod.Internet.mgmt.mib.system.sysDescr

1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1

This object identifier is 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1 to which is appended an instance sub-identifier of 0. That is, 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.1.0 identifies the one and only instance of sysDescr.

All of the MIB-II objects (for TCP/IP networks) are under the "mib" sub tree (so all these objects will have an identifier that starts with 1.3.6.1.2.1).

For a detailed description of the MIB, see RFC 1213.

See Also

Using SNMP Features

SNMP overview

Monitoring an SNMP Service

About the SNMP Agent or Manager

About SNMP Object Names and Identifiers

Using the SNMP MIB Manager

Using the SNMP MIB Manager to troubleshoot MIB files

About the SNMP operations

Using a custom name for SNMP device interfaces

About SNMP Security

Using the Trap Definition Import Tool