Subject: RE: help needed [SNMP PDU encoding]

From: "Natale, Robert C (Bob)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 14:09:45 -0400

Hi Shivom,

>        I am in need of some guidance, I am trying to implement SNMP
> BER encoding/decoding and havent been able to find the structure
> of the SNMP PDU in detail ( details in terms of bits/bytes) 
> everywhere I find it as a conceptual structure. I need to know the
> exact structure of the PDU organized by the bytes which can serve as
> a standard for encoding an SMMP PDU, I would appreciate if anyone
> could help in this regard,

I can give you only a moderately lame answer at this time...but I
hope it helps all the same --

Actually, piecing together how to do the encoding takes a bit of
research into several document sources (IETF RFCs, ITU ASN.1/BER
specs, Douglas Steedham's book), thinking about their contents,
and (at least in my personal experience!) some trial and error coding
efforts.

However, many of the good secondary sources (i.e., text books on
SNMP) give examples (some more detailed, some less).  You can find
a decent listing of such texts (through 1999 or so) in an early
section of the WinSNMP API spec (winsnmp.doc, an MS Word file) at
www.winsnmp.com.  There are a number of other web sites that give
SNMP book references as well...AltaVista or google should be helpful
with that.

Good luck!

Cordially,

BobN

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From: Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 16:56:27 -0700 (PDT)

Hi -

There are lots of ASN.1 resources out there, though I think
the BER spec itself (X.209's 1988 version is fine for purposes
of the SNMP) is all one really needs.  A site with lots of
information and links to many secondary sources is:

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/asn1/index.html

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 Randy Presuhn          BMC Software, Inc.  1-3141
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 Tel: +1 408 546-1006   San José, California 95131  USA
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