What is a SNMP Trap

[Santy]

I have a query regarding Simple Network Management Protocol. While configuring a windows computer with SNMP agents i got some message saying SNMP Traps. Its really new for me.

Could you guys please make me know what is SNMP Traps ? Help will be appreciated.

[Devasis]

SNMP protocol is used by network management systems to communicate with network elements.SNMP traps enable an agent to notify the management station of significant events by way of an unsolicited SNMP message.SNMP provides the ability to send traps, or notifications, to advise an administrator when one or more conditions have been met. Traps are network packets that contain data relating to a component of the system sending the trap. The data may be statistical in nature or even status related.The idea behind trap-directed notification is that if a manager is responsible for a large number of devices, and each device has a large number of objects, it is impractical for the manager to poll or request information from every object on every device.

[MrChris-]

By default, Microsoft SNMP agents do not trap anything under enterprise specific. This can change, however, depending on what is installed on the computer. SNMP traps are alerts generated by agents on a managed device. These traps generate 5 types of data:

• Coldstart or Warmstart: The agent reinitialized its configuration tables.
  
  
• Linkup or Linkdown: A network interface card (NIC) on the agent either fails or reinitialize.
  
  
• Authentication fails: This happens when an SNMP agent gets a request from an unrecognized community name.
  
  
• egpNeighborloss: Agent cannot communicate with its EGP (Exterior Gateway Protocol) peer.
  
  
• Enterprise specific: Vendor specific error conditions and error codes.

[jesse]

An SNMP TRAP is a message which is initiated by a network element and sent to the network management system.Trap-directed notification can result in substantial savings of network and agent resources by eliminating the need for frivolous SNMP requests.Traps are generated when a condition has been met on the SNMP agent. These conditions are defined in the Management Information Base (MIB) provided by the vendor. The administrator then defines thresholds, or limits to the conditions, that are to generate a trap.