SNMP GetPrev: an efficient way to browse large MIB tables

For some important network management applications, e.g., MIB browsing, there is a need to traverse portions of an MIB tree, especially tables, in both directions. While the GetNext request defined by the SNMP standard allows an easy and fast access to the next columnar object instance or the next scalar object, there is no corresponding operator in the SNMP framework for retrieving the previous MIB object instance. This allows an efficient MIB traversal only in one direction and makes the search in the reverse direction problematic. This paper presents SNMP GetPrev a tool that substantially optimizes retrieval of the previous instances of a columnar objects or scalar MIB objects. Our GetPrev application uses only standard SNMP GetNext and Get requests to carry on a fast and bandwidth efficient search for the required object instance. As we show, our application is two orders of magnitude faster and two to three orders of magnitude less bandwidth consuming when compared to the more traditional approaches.