RFC 1215 (rfc1215) - Page 2 of 9

Convention for defining traps for use with the SNMP

RFC 1215             Convention for Defining Traps            March 1991


   information: RFC 1065, which defined the Structure of Management
   Information (SMI), and RFC 1066, which defined the Management
   Information Base (MIB).  Both of these documents were designed so as
   to be compatible with both the SNMP and the OSI network management
   framework.

   This strategy was quite successful in the short-term: Internet-based
   network management technology was fielded, by both the research and
   commercial communities, within a few months.  As a result of this,
   portions of the Internet community became network manageable in a
   timely fashion.

   As reported in RFC 1109, Report of the Second Ad Hoc Network
   Management Review Group [2], the requirements of the SNMP and the OSI
   network management frameworks were more different than anticipated.
   As such, the requirement for compatibility between the SMI/MIB and
   both frameworks was suspended.  This action permitted the operational
   network management framework, based on the SNMP, to respond to new
   operational needs in the Internet community by producing MIB-II.

   In May of 1990, the core documents were elevated to "Standard
   Protocols" with "Recommended" status.  As such, the Internet-standard
   network management framework consists of: Structure and
   Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based internets,
   RFC 1155 [3], which describes how managed objects contained in the
   MIB are defined; Management Information Base for Network Management
   of TCP/IP-based internets, which describes the managed objects
   contained in the MIB, RFC 1156 [4]; and, the Simple Network
   Management Protocol, RFC 1157 [5], which defines the protocol used to
   manage these objects.

2.  Defining Traps

   Due to its initial requirement to be protocol-independent, the
   Internet-standard SMI does not provide a means for defining traps.
   Instead, the SNMP defines a few standardized traps and provides a
   means for management enterprises to transmit enterprise-specific
   traps.

   However, with the introduction of experimental MIBs, some of which
   have a need to define experiment-specific traps, a convenient means
   of defining traps is desirable.  The TRAP-TYPE macro is suggested for
   this purpose:

          IMPORTS
              ObjectName
                  FROM RFC 1155-SMI;




SNMP Working Group