SNMP Engine ID

The Engine ID is used by SNMPv3 entities to uniquely identify them. An SNMP agent is considered an authoritative SNMP engine. This means that the agent responds to incoming messages (Get, GetNext, GetBulk, Set), and sends trap messages to a manager. The agent's local information is encapsulated in fields in the message.

Each SNMP agent maintains local information that is used in SNMPv3 message exchanges. The default SNMP Engine ID is comprised of the enterprise number and the default MAC address. The SNMP engine ID must be unique for the administrative domain, so that no two devices in a network have the same engine ID.

Local information is stored in four MIB variables that are read-only (snmpEngineId, snmpEngineBoots, snmpEngineTime, and snmpEngineMaxMessageSize).

CAUTION    

When the engine ID is changed, all configured users and groups are erased.

To define the SNMP engine ID:

  1. Click SNMP > Engine ID. The Engine ID page opens.
  2. Select the Local Engine ID.
    • Use Default--Select to use the device-generated engine ID. The default engine ID is based on the switch MAC address, and is defined per standard as:
      • First 4 octets--First bit = 1, the rest is the IANA enterprise number.
      • Fifth octet--Set to 3 to indicate the MAC address that follows.
      • Last 6 octets--MAC address of the switch.
    • None--No engine ID is used.
    • User Defined--Enter the local device engine ID. The field value is a hexadecimal string (range: 10 - 64). Each byte in the hexadecimal character strings is represented by two hexadecimal digits. Each byte can be separated by a period or a colon.
  3. Click Apply. The Running Configuration file is updated.