What Are the Differences Between SNMP and RMON?

SNMP and RMON play significant roles in the realm of network monitoring, offering distinct functionalities that cater to different aspects of network management. This article focuses on comprehensive explanations of SNMP, RMON, and the distinctions between them.

What Is SNMP?

Definition

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), widely employed in TCP/IP networks, stands as a standard network management protocol. This protocol supports network management systems, enabling the monitoring of devices connected to the network for any management-related concerns. Employing a polling mechanism, SNMP offers a basic functionality set suitable for small, fast, and cost-effective environments. Utilizing User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets as carriers, SNMP garners support from a vast array of devices, ensuring management of information transmission between any two points. This facilitates administrators in retrieving information and troubleshooting network issues across various nodes.

Working Principle

Upon initiation in a network, SNMP, with Network Management System (NMS) as the network management hub, oversees device management. Each managed device encompasses an Agent residing within, multiple managed objects, and Management Information Base (MIB). Through interactions with Agents on managed devices, NMS issues commands that Agents execute via operations on the device's MIB. SNMP operates by dispatching Protocol Data Units (referred to as SNMP GET requests) to network devices responsive to SNMP. Users can track all communications and retrieve data from SNMP using network monitoring tools.

Features

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the prevailing network management standard protocol in TCP/IP networks, primarily focuses on network monitoring and management. It establishes a mature network management standard and enjoys extensive support from numerous vendors. Through SNMP, network administrators can query information, configure networks, locate faults, and plan capacities across network nodes. SNMP protocol plays a vital role in network maintenance with several advantages:

• Utilizes UDP protocol, consuming minimal network resources, enabling swift transmission of SNMP messages.

• Simple in design with few operation types and message varieties, making it easy to implement and reducing network management system costs.

• Bridges physical differences among devices, unifying management across diverse devices by establishing connections between devices and data.

What Is RMON?

Definition

RMON, short for Remote Network Monitoring, serves as a network management protocol implemented within the SNMP architecture. As distributed connectivity became prevalent in networks, SNMP's limitations in security, readability, backup, and polling mechanisms became increasingly evident. RMON emerged to enhance the availability of management information, alleviate the burden on management stations, and meet network administrators' needs for monitoring segment performance. An extension of the SNMP standard, RMON actively monitors and manages communication traffic flow within a segment or an entire heterogeneous environment, making SNMP more efficient and proactive in remote device monitoring. Network administrators leverage RMON to swiftly track network, segment, or device failures, preventing network resource failures.

Working Principle

RMON monitors data through two methods:

• NMS directly obtains management information and controls network resources through a dedicated RMON probe, acquiring all RMON MIB information.

• Embedding an RMON Agent into network devices (e.g., switches, routers) equips them with RMON probe functionality, allowing NMS to interact via SNMP architecture to collect network management information. This method, constrained by device resources, typically retrieves information on four groups: statistic, history, alarm, and event groups. Ruijie network devices employ the second method to collect data, enabling NMS to obtain segment data information from managed device interfaces for remote management.

Features

RMON offers several key features enhancing network management capabilities:

• Enables proactive monitoring of network traffic remotely, facilitating swift issue identification like dropped packets, network collisions, and congestion.

• Developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the early 1990s to address deficiencies in standard MIBs, providing statistics on data link and physical layer parameters.

• Allows setting performance thresholds and creating alerts upon threshold breaches, fostering a proactive network management approach.

• RMON probes or agents, hardware/software elements installed on network devices, collect information on network protocols and traffic activity, sending data back to the SNMP manager console for analysis and reporting.

• Facilitates monitoring network performance, logging data, generating historical performance reports, and issuing notifications in case of issues without disrupting daily operations.

RMON vs SNMP

• Management Scope: SNMP is primarily used for device-level management, while RMON focuses more on network traffic and performance monitoring, offering a broader scope of network management.

• Data Collection Method: SNMP actively retrieves data through polling, whereas RMON can proactively monitor traffic and collect data, enabling more flexible information acquisition.

• Data Storage and Processing: SNMP typically stores data in Management Information Base (MIB), while RMON features richer data storage and processing capabilities, allowing for the generation of historical performance reports and data analysis.

• Flexibility: RMON is more flexible compared to SNMP, allowing for customized monitoring strategies through setting performance thresholds, creating alerts, and adapting to the needs of different network environments.

• Scalability: RMON exhibits higher scalability in functionality and monitoring capabilities than SNMP, enabling the expansion of various types of monitoring functions based on requirements, suitable for the management needs of complex network environments.

Generally, network devices such as switches, routers, firewalls, wireless access points, servers, and network storage devices support SNMP and RMON, enabling them to achieve network monitoring, performance management, and fault diagnosis. For instance, FS S3900-48T6S-R switch supports SNMP and RMON, enhancing network stability and reliability.

Summary

In conclusion, SNMP is primarily used for device management, while RMON focuses on network traffic and performance monitoring, providing a broader scope of network management, more flexible data collection methods, data storage and processing capabilities, as well as higher flexibility and scalability.

FS, a professional provider of communication and high-speed network system solutions, offering a plenty of high-performance network devices supporting SNMP and RMON for your reliable networks. Shop at FS.com for more advanced networking solutions now!

You may be interested in: What Is RMON?