ICMP or SNMP

[Hythim Ali El Hadad]

Hi,

We have a monitoring system and we need to check if the switch is up or down

Is it better to use ICMP ping or SNMP

Is ICMP is better than SNMP as SNMP consumes more bandwidth, overhead and utilize switches resources more than ICMP ?

We need to lower the overhead on our network resources

Thanks

[balaji.bandi]

i would rely on both, some time ping may not give correct results, and due to some latency, you may see ping loss.

SNMP is the best way for the NMS use case. that has more features compared to ping.

SNMP consumes more bandwidth

what kind of bandwidth we are considering as more ? most of the networking monitor systems use SNMP to monitor a million devices.

[Hythim Ali El Hadad]

Hi Balaji
Thanks for your reply
The network consist of many rings and sometimes core switch CPU reach 100%
I don't need more overload to the switches CPU

[balaji.bandi]

As a network administrator - responsible to see make sure the device does not go more than 80% CPU, if the CPU hits 100% that means, the network does not give optimal results (forget about SNMP Monitoring) - most things fail, not sure if Ping gets the reply that time due to delay processing request.

So that means the network is not stable, or need more resource to upgrade to meet the requirement.

Also need to troubleshoot what causing CPU 100% , is this SNMP ?

Maybe if you are not able to upgrade, then we need to accept Ping as a reachability tool for you at this instance with the risk.

[Hythim Ali El Hadad]

The network isn't Cisco and it includes many rings
May be the switch resource isn't sufficient
I need an answer to my inquiries, which is less overload, ICMP or SNMP ?

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

the short answer is: ICMP has a much lower overhead than SNMP, so if your systems are already taxed, and you just need to check for basic connectivity, use ICMP.

[balaji.bandi]

Sure ICMP is for your question.