I’ve been doing a lot of testing with SNMP this week, and it is helpful to have an ad hoc SNMP client that can retrieve data before you go about trying to retrieve and parse data in your own code. I’m a lot more confident telling someone they gave me a bad community string if someone else’s “known working” program fails! Enter snmpwalk

Some of our devices return data out of order, so I need the -Cc (turn off check for increasing OID numbers). The following command walks the 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2 (ifDescr) tree for host 10.13.115.82 using the community string C0mmun1tyStr1ngH3r3:

snmpwalk -v 2c -c C0mmun1tyStr1ngH3r3 -Cc "10.13.115.82" .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1 = STRING: eth 6/0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.2 = STRING: eth 7/0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000072 = STRING: XGige 6/0
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000073 = STRING: XGige 6/1
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000074 = STRING: XGige 6/2
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000075 = STRING: XGige 6/3
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000076 = STRING: XGige 6/4
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000077 = STRING: XGige 6/5
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000078 = STRING: XGige 6/6
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000079 = STRING: XGige 6/7
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1000080 = STRING: Gige 6/0