In case you are interested in learning even more about the way the iNternet is functioning, you should also know about such crucial protocols as LDAP and SNMP. We are going to discuss them in this article.
LDAP
This one stands for Lightweight Directory Access protocol (LDAP) which enables your computer to dig in through the directories (Folders) of your system. Technically Operating system do that for you, since a system without operating system is like a vehicle without a driver. But then again, a drive without vehicle is not much of price either. Well, you get the point. A Windows server system running an active directory, for instance, uses LDAP to dig in and out of the directory tree. When you use your computer to add something to the an active directory, Windows uses LDAP commands to update the active directory domain with the relevant computer’s information. You don’t see LDAP making all of these happen right in front of your eyes but happening behind the scene, which keeps the network flowing smoothly.
SNMP
Stands for Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to enable remote query and configuration of virtually anything connected on the network. But for this protocol to work, the client devices need to support this protocol. These devices could be your router, swtiches, computers and so on so forth. The massive chunk of data that you can get using one of these query programs in beyond! SNMP is one of the popular and widely used protocol to check on your network.
A SNMP architecture has three major layers.
All of the managers are there to make sure the communication is established with network devices which supports SNMP agents. Here the manager, network device and SNMP agents are all come in as software.
These agents, which live inside the devices like switches, router, microwave, workstations, printers, radio etc. All of them provide necessary information to the SNMP agents. The role that plays between managers and agents is the MIB (Management Information Base). MIBs is a object of data which is managed by the agent of the agent device. These MIBs are actually plain text files and the values of the files are MIB data objects.
One of the common use cases of SNMP is to monitor device performance, detecting device faults and recovering them, collecting performance for long term, remote device configuration, remote device control.
This kind of protocols are not something you would have to touch unless you are a network engineer or Network+ certified tech.