RFC 1298 (rfc1298) - Page 2 of 5

SNMP over IPX

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RFC 1298                     SNMP over IPX                 February 1992


   available.  SNMP implementors should be aware that the choice of
   underlying transport may have a significant impact on the
   interoperability and ubiquity of the management capability in the
   Internet.  Considerations relevant to choosing a transport for use
   with SNMP are described in [5].

2.  Specification

   SNMP packets will always set the Packet Type field in the IPX header
   to 4 (i.e., Packet Exchange Packet).

2.1  Socket Assignments

   SNMP protocol entities will receive GetRequest-PDU, GetNextRequest-
   PDU, and SetRequest-PDU messages on socket 36879 (Destination Socket
   field set to hexadecimal 900F), and Trap-PDU messages on socket 36880
   (Destination Socket field set to hexadecimal 9010).

   GetResponse-PDU messages will be addressed to the IPX address and
   socket from which the corresponding GetRequest-PDU, GetNextRequest-
   PDU, or SetRequest-PDU originated.

2.2  Maximum Packet Length

   Although SNMP does not require conformant implementations to accept
   messages whose length exceed 484 bytes, it is recommended that
   implementations support a maximum SNMP message size of 546 bytes (the
   maximum size allowed under IPX).  Furthermore, this limit is the
   maximum packet length guaranteed to traverse IPX routers which do not
   provide fragmentation.  Implementors may choose to use longer packet
   lengths if the maximum is known, which depends on the intermediate
   routers and/or intermediate datalink layer protocols.

2.3  The agent-addr Field for the Trap-PDU

   The agent-addr field in a Trap-PDU emitted by an SNMP agent should
   contain the IpAddress 0.0.0.0.  An SNMP manager may ascertain the
   source of the trap by querying the transport layer.

2.4  IPX Transport Address Representation

   There are occasions when it is necessary to represent a transport
   service address in a MIB.  For instance, the SNMP party MIB [6] uses
   an OBJECT IDENTIFIER to define the transport domain (IP, IPX, etc.)
   and an OCTET STRING to represent an address within that domain.  The
   following definitions are provided for use in such a scheme.





Wormley & Bostock
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