SNMP devices performace

[santo.suy]

We have the following CISCO equipments in our inter-network which has to be monotored by up to 14 SNMP managers :

- Catalyst 450X with SUP 4

- Catalyst 3550

- Catalyst 2950 and

- CISCO router 1760

Questions :

1-Do you know if there is a limitation on the number of SNMP Manager that can be managed by a device ?

2-In the case when a lot of traps and gets from the 14 SNMP Managers has to be processed by the devices, what is the implication on the switching and routing performances. Are we sure that the switching and routing processing has higher priority than SNMP priority ?

3- Is it possible to limit the number of SNMP gets to be processed on a device in order to limit the consequences of a burst of gets ?

Thank you for your answer.

[rsissons]

There is no architectural limitation to the number of SNMP managers supported but there will be a practical limitation based on performance.

In layer 2 switches the SNMP traffic will be switched in exactly the same way as any other frames. In IOS, the SNMP process will compete for CPU resources with every other process running. There is no way to limit or prioritise the service that the SNMP process receives.