Cisco CCDE Written Exam: How Community Formats are Sent in SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c

SNMP Community Formats: Sending in SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c

Question

How are community formats sent in SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

B.

SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c (Simple Network Management Protocol version 1 and version 2c) are network management protocols that are used to monitor and manage network devices such as routers, switches, and servers.

SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c both use community strings as a basic security mechanism for authenticating access to network devices. The community string is a password-like string that is sent along with SNMP requests and responses, allowing SNMP managers to authenticate and access SNMP agents.

In SNMPv1, community strings are sent in clear text. This means that anyone who intercepts SNMP messages can easily read the community strings, which makes SNMPv1 vulnerable to security attacks. To mitigate this security weakness, SNMPv3 was introduced, which supports encrypted communication.

In SNMPv2c, community strings are also sent in clear text by default, just like in SNMPv1. However, SNMPv2c introduced a new feature called "community-based SNMPv2c message security" that allows community strings to be sent as part of an encrypted session. This feature enables SNMPv2c to provide a higher level of security than SNMPv1, but it requires additional configuration and is not enabled by default.

Therefore, the correct answer to the question is D. In SNMPv1, community strings are sent in clear text, while in SNMPv2c, they are sent as part of an encrypted session.