Re: MRTG

[Mike Ayers <mike.ayers@earthling.net>]

Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> 
> I strongly suggest you NOT to use SNMP - It is a VERY insecure protocol.
> Use instead MRTG's operation mode where it connects to a specific TCP port
> and expects only two quantities... This allows you to use MRTG to monitor
> not only bandwith usage, but also other many factors, such as CPU/RAM/disk
> usage.

	Note that SNMP can be made reasonably[1] secure by using only SNMPv3 in
authPriv mode.  This can be done by appropriate VACM/USM configuration. 
There is, however, a bit of a learning curve.  Net-snmp (formerly
ucd-snmp) has a few tools to ease the pain, is recommended, and is in
the packages list.


/|/|ike

[1]  AES, wherefore art thou?  The IETF muckety-mucks are having trouble
figuring out who will be responsible for algorithm updates for SNMP, so
at present only HMAC-MD5 and HMAC-SHA are available for authentication,
and only CBC-DES for encryption.