Agent Extensibility Protocol
| AgentX (Agent Extensibility Protocol) | |
|---|---|
| Family: | Internet protocol family |
| Field of application: |
Network management , agent modularization |
| Based on |
Unix Domain Socket or TCP (Port 705) |
| Default: | RFC 2741 |
| application | AgentX | ||||
| transport | TCP | ||||
| Internet | IP ( IPv4 , IPv6 ) | ||||
| Network access | Ethernet |
Token bus |
Token ring |
FDDI | ... |
The Agent Extensibility Protocol or AgentX for short is a network protocol for the modular expansion of SNMP agents. It is an Internet standard that is described in RFC 2741 .
Basic function
AgentX is part of the SNMP management framework and has the task of forwarding SNMP requests from a so-called master agent to one or more subagents. Master and subagent are usually on the same machine, which is why the classification of AgentX as a network protocol has a more formal character. AgentX does not provide access control as this is done by the master agent and should therefore not be used over the network. Agentx is independent of the SNMP version supported by the master agent.
Demarcation
In other modularization approaches, the SNMP agent is dynamically expanded by code in the form of dynamic libraries or instructed via its configuration to call external programs for certain data. With AgentX, on the other hand, the master agent only provides an interface with which the subagents log on, register their subtree of the MIB and, if necessary, log off again. So it is the subagents that determine how the master agent is extended and not the configuration of the master agent. All of this happens at runtime without restarting the master agent.