LANs to WANs: The Complete Management Guide

The SNMP standard provides a limited number of unsolicited messages, called traps, which are sent from a device to an SNMP application. These messages can be sent by the SNMP agent on the device to notify an SNMP application of a change in the status of the device. Bridges occupy a key position in the wireless infrastructure and may be set up to generate SNMP traps and send them to a network management station. A trap is sent whenever a significant event occurs. The following trap messages will be sent as they occur:

• A cold start trap will be sent when the bridge is first powered up;

• A linkup trap is sent for a bridge as soon as the radio is configured;

• A link-down trap is sent when a bridge configuration is changed or encounters a severe error condition;

• A linkup trap is sent when a bridge’s configuration is changed or restored from a severe error condition;

• An authentication failure trap will be sent if an SNMP request is received with an unknown community name.

In addition, enterprise-specific traps can be sent whenever a log of a given severity or higher is produced. The generated trap will contain the text of the log message along with the severity of the log.

The network administrator can choose one bridge to monitor and have all other units associate with that unit as their host for logs. All logs can be forwarded to a UNIX host so that if the bridge fails for any reason, the logs may still be viewed on the UNIX host. At the UNIX host, the current time and IP address of the unit that sent the log will be added.