RFC 1187 (rfc1187) - Page 2 of 12
Bulk Table Retrieval with the SNMP
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RFC 1187 Bulk Table Retrieval with the SNMP October 1990 The reader is expected to be familiar with both the Simple Network Management Protocol and SNMP's powerful get-next operator. Please send comments to: Marshall T. Rose <mrose@psi.com>. 3. Bulk Table Retrieval with the SNMP Empirical evidence has shown that SNMP's powerful get-next operator is effective for table traversal, particularly when the management station is interested in well-defined subsets of a particular table. There has been some concern that bulk table retrieval can not be efficiently accomplished using the powerful get-next operator. Recent experience suggests otherwise. In the simplest case, using the powerful get-next operator, one can traverse an entire table by retrieving one object at a time. For example, to traverse the entire ipRoutingTable, the management station starts with: get-next (ipRouteDest) which might return ipRouteDest.0.0.0.0 The management station then continues invoking the powerful get-next operator, using the value provided by the previous response, e.g., get-next (ipRouteDest.0.0.0.0) As this sequence continues, each column of the ipRoutingTable can be retrieved, e.g., get-next (ipRouteDest.192.33.4.0) which might return ipRouteIfIndex.0.0.0.0 Eventually, a response is returned which is outside the table, e.g., get-next (ipRouteMask.192.33.4.0) which might return ipNetToMediaIfIndex.192.33.4.1 So, using this scheme, O(rows x columns) management operations are required to retrieve the entire table. Rose, McCloghrie & Davin
