Methods Of Research And Implementation Of Snmp-based Network Topology Discovery

The rapid development of network technology makes the network scale larger and larger. The equipments used in the network come from different manufacturers, and then it becomes very important to manage these equipments effectively. This paper firstly introduces the model and structure of network management, analyses and compares the different network management protocols presently existed, and puts the emphasis on the Simple Network Management Protocol. Secondly, after analyzing severl commonly used methods for Internet Topology Structure discovery, it discusses the method based on SNMP in detail. Aimming at the characteristic of the network structure, this paper provides a network topology discovery method, which implements topology discovery in two degrees in terms of network layer. In the first level the routers and subnets are detected; the second is to get some information, such as, the hosts in subnets, the type of subnets, etc. Further more, the paper discusses the discovery method of the Data-link layer equipments, such as switches or bridges, based on the analysis of their work principle.