Why do we need SNMP interface status monitoring?
Sometimes, certain interfaces within a node do not have an IP address. A common example is the interface of a switch. Another example is an interface that has an IP address, but that address cannot be reached by the monitoring agent. In order to know the status of these interfaces, we can ask their containing node what their status is using the SNMP protocol.

The SNMP status monitor is an agent of the Genie - Monitoring platform product that sends SNMP requests to query the administrational and operational status of given interfaces, and analyzes the replies from the devices.

The agent is created to perform this operation very quickly using asynchronous operations and complex algorithms that enable it to monitor tens of thousands of interfaces in cycles of around a minute. The agent does not wait for a response from a given node to monitor other nodes.

It contains many flow control parameters that enable it to work in all kinds of networks, with equipment that supports the SNMP protocol in different ways.
On the node level, the agent supports:

• Monitoring frequency
• Monitoring hours
• Timeout if no reply
• Retry count
• The number of SNMP queries sent simultaneously to a given node
• The number of SNMP OIDs combined in a single request

and more...

Status Measurement
The agent's basic function is to monitor the status of the selected interfaces. It checks if the node containing the interface responded to the request, and if yes, what its response was, and according to this responce, it sets the interface's status.

When a status change is discovered, it launches an event handler which is a user defined command. The user defined command can for example send an SNMP trap to a management platform, or send a message to an operator.

The product is able to generate an alert message if the interface is flickering (i.e. changes status too often). There is an option to specify a limit of status rotation within a day. Above this limit, an event handler is launched.