CoAP-SNMP Interworking IoT Scenarios

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is the de-facto means of network management in the Internet. SNMP forms the basis of many tools and applications used by operators and network administrators for network and device monitoring, management and troubleshooting. As the Internet continues its evolution towards incorporating vast amounts of resource limited devices and constrained networks, deploying SNMP capabilities into such environments would be highly challenging. Consequently, consistent network and device management via the usage of SNMP becomes problematic. Such devices, of which sensors and actuators are good examples, however would in all likelihood support the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) in future. CoAP is a resource retrieval protocol for IoT under design which will soon be adopted as an IETF standard. The purpose of this report is to analyse means of allowing SNMP-based tools and applications to co-exist and interact with CoAP-enabled endpoints. Compatible protocol characteristics of both SNMP and CoAP are highlighted, and potential pitfalls and significant network and device management challenges are investigated. Solutions for overcoming these are also proposed.