IETF RFC 2788 PDF

Introduction

A networked application is a realization of some well-defined service on one or more host computers that is accessible via some network, uses some network for its internal operations, or both.

There are a wide range of networked applications for which it is appropriate to provide SNMP monitoring of their network usage. This includes applications using both TCP/IP and OSI networking. This document defines a MIB which contains the elements common to the monitoring of any network service application. This information includes a table of all monitorable network service applications, a count of the associations (connections) to each application, and basic information about the parameters and status of each application-related association.

This MIB may be used on its own for any application, and for most simple applications this will suffice. This MIB is also designed to serve as a building block which can be used in conjunction with application-specific monitoring and management. Two examples of this are MIBs defining additional variables for monitoring a Message Transfer Agent (MTA) service or a Directory Service Agent (DSA) service. It is expected that further MIBs of this nature will be specified.

This MIB does not attempt to provide facilities for management of the host or hosts the network service application runs on, nor does it provide facilities for monitoring applications that provide something other than a network service. Host resource and general application monitoring is handled by either the Host Resources MIB [1] or the application MIB [2].