Why is it not possible to configure everything via snmp ?

[christoph.ehret]

Hi,

I was just wondering why it is actyally not possible to configure every parameter of a router, for example ACLs, via snmp ? I read that it can be possible if you download the configuration file to the NMS, add what you want to it, and upload it again to the device, all using snmp (for me, as I have no support for the CISCO-CONFIG-COPY-MIB, I found that I could do it apparently also thanks to the CISCO-FLASH-MIB), but you need tftp or rcp. Why is it not possible to do it directly (without having to download and upload again the configuration file) ? Or have I missed something ?

[rmushtaq]

Beacuse there isn't a one to one mapping between every single IOS CLI command and corresponding OIDs

[christoph.ehret]

I think that it is really a pitty (I hope that it is the right translation for the french sentence "c'est vraiment dommage") that this is actually not possible, i.e not a one to one mapping. If it were effectively so, this could really help regarding forward to an automatic configuration of a lot of network devices, something like, plug-and-play for your network : you plug all your network devices on the LAN and click a simple button to configure and deploy all your configurations for your network (and this could be done among other for example with snmp). But this can only be achieved if we can do with snmp what we can do via CLI commands.