What is an SNMP GetBulk Request?

To know more about the SNMP protocol, download our white paper www.dpstele.com/snmp/tutorial...
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SNMP is a very common communication protocol for remote monitoring systems. That's because it allows the real-time exchange of information between network devices - and it also allows notifications of events to be sent to technicians.
Every version of this protocol (SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3) supports three request types - Get, GetNext and Set. However, the newer versions of SNMP also support an additional request message called GetBulk
In this video, Andrew explains what GetBulk is and how it works.
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Talk to Andrew about your SNMP monitoring project at www.dpstele.com/dps/contact.php

[@who_su]

Thank you!

[@pedroafonsorodrigues]

Hi! I have a question. In my experiments, I made a getBulkRequest to a MIB, with 9 var binds (9 columns of a table) meaning I wanted the response to have those 9 attributes. But in the getresponse a total of 108 var binds came, and some of them weren't even columns that I asked for. Why are the columns that I didn't ask for, in the response PDU? Does the getBulk ONLY respond to the request varbinds, or does it read all varbinds in between the ones requested? Btw loved the video, thanks

[@cuasingeniera]

Hi Pedro, probably you already figured this out 🙂but the amount of variables returned by GetBulk depends on the actual non-repeaters and max-rep values you provided. The default value is usually 10, but it seems that, in your case, it was 12 (or you indicated 12 somehow). Additionally, if the table has fewer than 10/12 rows (depending on the max-rep value you indicated), it will return duplicate values and even variables out of the table. This is because GetBulk acts similarly to a GetNext and if it goes "out of range", it does not return an error, but it keeps on returning the following instances of the objects (even if they are objects out of the table). I hope this helps 🙂