Recommendation for a Gig Switch

[Kevin D. Clark]

Rich Braun writes:

> No SNMP manageability.  It boggles my mind that 2009 is here and
> SNMP isn't built into every gizmo on the planet yet.

As somebody who has spent a huge amount of time working with SNMP on
the product side (both on the manager and agent side), it seems to me
that the following statement is true: many technical buyers view SNMP
managability as an important "checkoff item" -- they might not make
the purchase if the box doesn't have SNMP support -- but then when it
comes to actually managing the box, most people seem to use the local
management interface.

This is a frustrating situation to somebody like me who has spent a
huge amount of effort trying to get boxes to support standard MIBs or
(if there are no standards in place) to adhere to a logically
consistant and well-defined MIB.

For example, I can think of a vendor RIGHT NOW who is enjoying success
in the marketplace, but under the hood, all of their enterprise OIDs
constantly and haphazardly change, because either nobody on their
staff knows anything about SNMP or else they don't care.  If I was on
their staff you can be certain that I would be doing whatever I could
to fix this.  But, let me be clear: this vendor is enjoying some
success, and their OID tree is in shambles (but the boxes "support
SNMP!!!").  As an engineer and as somebody who takes pride in getting
issues like these right, this situation bothers me quite a bit.

Anyways, just my two cents worth.

Kind regards,

--kevin
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