This post will highlight Mikrotik/RouterOS issues, but it’s certainly not only them that suffer from S(hitty)NMP implementations.

Far be it from me thinking SNMP is perfect, nor that it’s necessarily always a good idea. I just have to wonder how it’s possible to screw up such a simple thing.

For example, Mikrotik has this nifty feature where you can look up the OIDs in a specific context by calling the print command with the parameter oid:

[user@R1] /system resource> pri oid
           uptime: .1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0
  total-hdd-space: .1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.5.131073
   used-hdd-space: .1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.6.131073

Except then this happens:

mon# snmpwalk -c ${com} -v 2c ${host} 1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.5.131073
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrStorageSize.131073 = No more variables left in this MIB View (It is past the end of the MIB tree)
mon# snmpwalk -c ${com} -v 2c ${host} 1.3.6.1.2.1.25.2.3.1.6.131073
HOST-RESOURCES-MIB::hrStorageUsed.131073 = No more variables left in this MIB View (It is past the end of the MIB tree)

The situation has at least improved vastly, though. Instead of finding the MIB file in some godforsaken dead corner of their documentation site (which is basically just kept on life support), the wiki has a formal section for it now. Still…things could be better:

• Still no trap support in the various routing protocols/daemons (as far as I know)
• Various bits of inconsistency like the above items
• Indexes on dynamic interfaces and the like change, and with no way (that I’m aware of, once again) to lock them to a specific index irrespective of interface state.

There’s another issue that might’ve been fixed in the meantime, I haven’t checked in a while. SNMPv1 has a specific set of counter types, and anything bigger than n (where n was some signed integer limit or something) would only be displayable in SNMPv2. RouterOS just decided to not care about this at all, and respond with the number under the same counter type, but only ever when using SNMPv1.

Seriously, why is this stuff so broken?