What SNMP does have for it is it is lightweight (to some extent) vs XML that can get quite bulky, and certainly is the case when trying to do many interfaces at once. I have seen better precision with snmp vs cli interaction/tcp based interaction. snmpbulkwalk has been my cruel mistress for several years... But does provide the detail/accuracy most days. Also keep in mind most hardware only pulls or pushes counters every 5s anyways... Jared Mauch On Dec 6, 2011, at 2:13 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> wrote:
I actually would submit SNMP was never the right tool for the job, just the tool we had. Even today where it's most popular use is to poll interfaces for statistics it would be easier on the device, programmer, and operator to make one tcp connection, send a list of things to poll, and get back a blob of text. I hesitate to say XML + Restful, becuse I think it need not be that specific solution, but that is a solution that meets the criteria. The only thing SNMP has going for it at this point in time is inertia.