Creating an SNMP Namespace

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

You create a namespace by creating an instance of the __NAMESPACE class. The namespace must include implementation-specific context information. For the SNMP providers, this context information consists of transport properties that define how the providers access an SNMP agent. The namespace, together with its context, defines a view of a network device.

Context information is stored within a namespace as a set of class qualifiers. The following table shows the context qualifiers for the SNMP providers. Note that in the current release, only one of these qualifiers, AgentAddress, is mandatory.

Namespace
class qualifier
Type Description Default value Comments
AgentAddress string Mandatory. Transport address associated with the SNMP agent. None Specify a valid unicast host address or a domain host name that can be resolved through the operating system's domain-name-resolution process.
AgentTransport string Optional. Transport protocol used to communicate with the SNMP agent. IP Currently the only valid value is IP.
AgentReadCommunityName string Optional. Optional. The SNMP community name access string that the SNMP agent uses to authenticate an SNMP PDU during a read operation. public An SNMP community name is a variable-length octet string that must be mapped to a unicode string representation. It is, therefore, a limitation of the SNMP providers that community names be restricted to alphanumeric characters.
AgentWriteCommunityName string Optional. The SNMP community name access string that the SNMP agent uses to authenticate an SNMP PDU during a write operation public An SNMP community name is a variable-length octet string that must be mapped to a unicode string representation. It is, therefore, a limitation of the SNMP providers that community names be restricted to alphanumeric characters.
AgentRetryCount int32 Optional. The number of times a single SNMP request can be retried when there is no response from the SNMP agent before the request is deemed to have failed. 1 Specify an integer between 0 and 2^32-1. You must perform the twos-complement operation to generate signed integer representation.
AgentRetryTimeout int32 Optional. The time, in milliseconds, to wait for a response to an SNMP request sent to the SNMP agent. 500 Specify an integer between 1 and 2^32-1. You must perform the twos-complement operation to generate signed integer representation.
AgentVarBindsPerPdu int32 Optional. Every SNMP request sent to the SNMP agent contains one or more SNMP variables. This parameter specifies the largest number of variables that may be included in a single request. 10 Specifying zero causes the implementation to determine the optimal variable bindings. Otherwise, specify an integer between 1 and 2^32-1. You must perform the twos-complement operation to generate signed integer representation. Note that while increasing this value can improve performance, some agents and/or networks cannot deal with the resulting request.
AgentFlowControlWindowSize int32 Optional. The maximum number of concurrently outstanding SNMP requests that can be sent to this agent while a response has not been received. A large window size generally improves performance, but some agents might not work well under a heavy load. 10 Specifying zero indicates an infinite window size. Otherwise, specify a value between 1 and 2^32-1. You must perform the twos-complement operation to generate signed integer representation.
AgentSNMPVersion string Optional. The version of the SNMP protocol to be used when communicating with the SNMP agent. 1 Currently, the only valid value is 1 (for SNMPv1).

    To create a namespace
  1. Create an instance of the __NAMESPACE class.
  2. Define the AgentAddress qualifier for the newly-created namespace instance.
  3. Define other context qualifiers, if desired.

You can use the CIM Studio to create namespaces and to define context qualifiers. See the WBEM SDK Applications Guide for instructions.