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FAQ


We answer the most common questions about Active SNMP here:

Any other question? E-mail it to asnmp@cscare.com.

How is Active SNMP licensed ?

Active SNMP licenses differ in the number of graphs that can be created by all users. If you have e.g. the 'Lite' license of Active SNMP, your Active SNMP users can create up to five graphs of various SNMP variables. If any of the users attempts to create an additional graph (the 6th graph in this case), Active SNMP reports an error.

CSCare Inc. provides the following types of Active SNMP license:
  1. Active SNMP Lite license allows full MIB browsing plus creating up to 5 graphs.
  2. Active SNMP Professional license allows together with full MIB browsing, creating up to 50 graphs.
  3. Active SNMP Enterprise license allows full MIB browsing, as the previous licenses, plus creating an unlimited number of graphs.

Active SNMP licenses come in the form of a special license key string. The license key can be applied only to a single installation of Active SNMP.

What does it mean the evaluation version of Active SNMP ?

CSCare Inc. also provides an evaluation version of Active SNMP. It works as the licensed version, but has the following built-in limitations:

  • only three graphs in total can be created
  • Active SNMP Evaluation runs for 24 hours only. It needs to be manually restarted afterwards.

The evaluation version of Active SNMP is provided only for evaluation purposes as described in 'license.txt'.

How can I add a new license key to Active SNMP ?

You can enter the Active SNMP license key in the Web browser:

  1. Select the Options/Licensing page.
  2. Enter the license key in the New License Key edit box.
  3. Click the Add button.

In case of upgrading from 'Lite' to 'Professional' version, the license key is added to the Registered License Keys list. There you can find a key serial number and the number of graphs permitted by the entered license key.

How can I log in for the first time ?

Active SNMP is a server application running on a particular network node. The user accesses Active SNMP with a standard web browser from any other (or the same) machine in the network.

To Connect to Active SNMP:

Start your web browser and open communication with the port on the server where Active SNMP is running.

Example of the URL to open:

  • http://server:6611/
    It opens Active SNMP running on the host machine with the name 'server'.
  • http://127.0.0.1:6611/
    http://localhost:6611/
    It opens Active SNMP on the local machine.

After connecting to Active SNMP, the default user name appears automatically in the User Name line on the Login page. You can log in either as this default user or use your own account. After installation, the administrator account is used as the default user for Active SNMP.

Are there any built-in accounts in Active SNMP ?

Active SNMP comes pre-configured with two accounts:

  1. One is the built-in administrator account. After installation, the administrator account is used as the default user for Active SNMP. This account has an empty password at this time. It enables you to get in easily with complete access rights. User logged in under administrator account has complete access to Active SNMP. He/she is able to create new accounts and delete existing accounts, has access to log files, and is allowed to shut down Active SNMP. The administrator may create graphs, too. In addition, he/she can manage graphs created by all users.
  2. The other account is guest with an empty password. Guests cannot change this password, use the MIB compiler and are not allowed to perform the SNMP set command. He/she can create graphs. The only limitation is that all graph settings are destroyed on logout or session timeout.

NOTES:

  • It is strongly recommended that the administrator password is changed right after the installation.
  • Administrator can delete the guest account.

How can I change my Active SNMP password ?

  1. Make sure that you are not logged in as guest. Guests are not allowed to change their password.
  2. From the main menu, select Options / Password.
  3. Enter the current password in the Old Password line.
  4. Enter the new password into the New Password edit line, and retype it into the Retype New Password edit line.
  5. Click the Set Password button.

Which Web browser can I use ?

A Web browser supporting frames, Java Script and CSS is required. The following browsers or their newer versions are recommended: MS Internet Explorer 5.5, Netscape Navigator 7, Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 7.0.

How can I start Active SNMP from the command line ?

Active SNMP installation utility creates a launch script (batch file or shell script) in its home directory. Use this file to launch Active SNMP.

It is possible to launch Active SNMP manually on any system using the command line.

  1. Launch Active SNMP from the command line:

       java -jar asnmp.jar

  2. Start the Default.html file with your Web browser. Alternatively, open the address http://127.0.0.1:6611 in your browser.

In order to set the correct working directory, use the -d <home directory> command line parameter:

   java -jar /home/user/activesnmp/asnmp.jar -d /home/user/activesnmp

How can I start Active SNMP on a different port than the default HTTP port 6611 ?

You can modify the command line used to start Active SNMP. Add the command line parameter -p <port number> in order to start Active SNMP on a specific port.

Example of the command line to start Active SNMP on port 80:

   java -jar asnmp.jar -p 80

What does the UnknownHostException mean when entering the address ?

The UnknownHostException report appears sometimes in the Active SNMP console.

There may be more reasons for this problem:

  • Network problem: try to ping the address. The target is most probably not available at that moment.
  • DNS is not installed or is not running: make sure, that the Domain Name Service (DNS) works properly on the Active SNMP computer. You can use the standard ping utility to check, whether DNS works correctly.

    Note: You can run Active SNMP without DNS, however, you must use plain IP addresses instead of DNS names for the managed nodes then.

How secure is Active SNMP ?

Active SNMP protects itself from unwanted access by requesting users to log in. That should be sufficient to ensure that only the authorized users can get access to Active SNMP.

Note: The user name and password is transmitted in cleartext over the wire.

Does Active SNMP use any Java applets or OCX code ?

Active SNMP does not use any Java applets or OCX controls. All the data Active SNMP sends to the browser is in HTML code that contains Java Script and CSS.

Percentile filters - how to eliminate spikes in graphs?

In order to eliminate possible high or low spikes in graphs, percentile filters can be used. If the percentile filter (upper and/or lower) is activated in graph properties, the value which falls above the upper and/or bellow the lower percentile (a spike) is then replaced by the computed percentile in the graph. The scanned data in log files remain unchanged, as the percentile filter has no influence on data scanned and stored in the application's log files.

After switching off the percentile filter, the original values will be displayed in the graph again.

A percentile represents a statistic measure that tells us what proportion of the data in a given set of observations falls above and below that measure.

For a set of data arranged in rank order, the pth percentile is a number such that p% of the data is below and (100 - p)% of the data is above the pth percentile.

Percentiles can be used to eliminate possible inconsistencies or errors in observations.

The value of the pth percentile is computed in the following steps:
  1. Data are sorted form low to high
  2. The measurement N=(n-1)*p+1 is calculated, where n is the number of measurements and p is the percentile (0<p<1)
  3. In case that N is not a whole number, NI is assigned to the whole part of N and NR is assigned to the decimal part as NR=N-NI
  4. Y[NI] is assigned as the value of the NI measurement and Y[NI+1] as the value of the NI+1 measurement
  5. If NR !=0, then OFFSET is calculated as (Y[NI+1]-Y[NI])*NR, else OFFSET=0
  6. Value of the pth percentile is then P=Y[NI]+OFFSET
Example:

There are 10 measurements sorted from the lowest to the highest value:

1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 10.

Let's calculate the 90th percentile (p=0.90) from these measurements.

N=(10-1)*0.90+1=9.1
NI=9; NR=0.1
Y[NI]=3; Y[NI+1]=10
OFFSET=(10-3)*0.1=0.7
P=3+0.7=3.7

The 90th percentile from the measured values equals 3.7. If the value 10, in this case, was considered as a spike in the graph (a possible error value), then activation of the 90% upper percentile filter would replace the value 10 with 3.7 in the graph.

Trap ConsoleActive SNMPJWinSvcService Console