The implementation of the simple gateway monitoring protocol

The Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol is one of several network management protocols proposed to address the needs of managing today's heterogeneous computer networks. The structure of several proposed network management protocols were examined with attention to the potential strengths and weaknesses of each. The Simple Gateway Monitoring Protocol (SGMP) was implemented to examine its practicability as a network management protocol. Questions about using the SGMP included whether the protocol's use of the Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) language introduce complexity that would counter the advantage of the protocol's simple design and whether connectionless transport be sufficient for a network management protocol. Many programs were written to communicate via the SGMP. Central to all of the programs was a library of routines that created and parsed the SGMP messages. This library was written in the C programming language and designed to be portable to many different computer environments. It was found that the SGMP could be used to manage networks. The use of ASN.1 in the SGMP was limited to a small subset that was easily implemented. The use of connectionless transport allowed the SGMP to function when connection-oriented protocols failed. The SGMP has evolved into a standard for the management of Internet Protocol-based networks.