[SNMP4J] community

[Frank Fock]

Hi Vee,

A community string can be any octet string (yes, it may include 0 characters
that are used in C to mark a string's end). The length of the community 
stirngs
supported by a device is implementation dependent. Thus, the community 
string
can be any string not only "public" or "private". Since community 
strings are
send as plain text across the network, it is fairly easy to sniff them. 
Consequently,
in a managed network (where SNMP message are exchanged regularly) it
provides near to no security. Nevertheless, it is better than nothing to 
change
the community strings from the widely used defaults.

This might have been the case in your network. You will have to ask the
system admin of your Uni for the (read) community.

Best regards,
Frank

Vee wrote:

>Hi 
>        I have used snmp4j for a certain period of time for my project. It worked so impressively. Thank you for creating such a good library like this.  
>        However, for the project, I have tested it with network simulator and it was ok on fetching MIB values from simulated devices, but when I tried it with the real devices at my Uni, it could not get any value from them. My friend told me that probably because the network admin disabled SNMP for the network devices. Is that possible? I'm quite new in network technology. I suspect that it would be as my friend said and more than that it could be caused by put an incorrect community name (by default, it is 'public' but to what extent can we change the community name? to anything? I thought we can choose only 'public' and 'private', is that correct?) what is the cause of this problem? Please suggest. I used snmp v.1 protocol on win xp 
>
>Kind regards,
>Jacky
>
>
>
>Surmsak Mahittivanitcha [V] 
>Address : 71/398 Pitt st. Sydney, NSW  2000
>Mob. : +61(4)-2165-5794
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