MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator

Main features


MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator lets you effectively simulate SNMP networks without expensive and bulky network equipment. Thus, you can significantly benefit from the software if you are, for example, involved in designing or testing of network management applications, or conducting NMS training, or giving NMS demonstrations in course of sales campaigns, or evaluating network management applications before purchase, etc.

MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator supports a wealth of features and capabilities that make it an easy to use yet extremely powerful SNMP agent simulating product:

Effectively simulating diverse SNMP networks
The software can simulate thousands of SNMP-manageable network devices. Each simulated SNMP agent binds to a specified IPv4 or IPv6 address, UDP or TCP port and network interface and can support its own set of SNMP access parameters and implemented OIDs (MIB modules). Also, every simulated SNMP agent has its own notion of uptime. Values of OIDs returned by the simulated agents may be fixed or configured to automatically change using the scheme defined in live agent templates. Furthermore, as with real SNMP agents, values of writable OIDs may be modified in real-time via the SNMP Set operation. Therefore, the software lets you simulate SNMP networks that appear to network management systems as a multitude of real physical devices (screen shot).
Simulator engines and powerful management console (GUI)
The main components of the software are the simulator engine and the management console. Simulator engine is a Windows service that can simulate numerous SNMP agents on the same computer. To facilitate enterprise level simulations, many simulator engines can be deployed on computers across the network. Even in such complex setups, a single easy-to-use management console (GUI) is used for configuring and managing all simulated agent instances. The management console lets you manage (add, delete, start, stop, assign their properties,...) all simulated agent instances individually or collectively as a group. The software incorporates also convenient filtering tool that lets you search for and displays only those agent instances that match the search criteria, supporting wildcards and use of regular expressions. The management console user interface fully supports high pixel density (HiDPI) displays and features Light and Dark visual theme (screen shot).
Distributed simulations running across a number of computers
MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator supports distributed simulations, where Simulator Engines run on different computers in your network. This allows you to effectively simulate extremely large networks consisting of tens of thousands of SNMP devices, without the fear to overload any particular host computer (screen shot).
Creating SNMP agent content by taking snapshots of real SNMP agents
The software lets you take a snapshot of any SNMP agent on the network, store all retrieved OIDs and their values in the agent snapshot file, and then simulate this SNMP device by returning the same OIDs and values to received SNMP queries. Actually, the software lets you create a snapshot of the entire (sub)network (e.g. IP range) at the same time in order to capture a consistent state of SNMP agents on interconnected devices (screen shot).
Generating SNMP agent content from MIB definition files
In addition to taking snapshots of real SNMP devices on the network, one can generate agent snapshot files also directly from one or more MIB modules. This feature lets you simulate and test new SNMP agents even before they have been implemented, or simulate non-existing, hybrid SNMP agents (screen shot).
Powerful SNMP agent snapshot editor
The software incorporates a convenient and user-friendly GUI for editing the content of snapshot files captured from real-world SNMP agents, as well as snapshots generated directly from MIB files. Besides scalars, columnar object instances in MIB tables can also be easily added, modified or deleted (screen shot).
Template-based live SNMP agent behaviour
Live agent templates control how the values of numerical MIB object instances change in simulated SNMP agents, enabling effective simulation of different behaviour of SNMP-manageable devices (e.g., devices under modest or heavy load, network traffic, resources usage, etc.). Once configured, the live agent templates can be easily assigned to any number of simulated SNMP agents to exhibit the desired behaviour (screen shot).
Request-based and time-based live agent templates
One can configure live agent templates to be either request-based or time-based. If the request-based method is selected, the value changes every time the given object instance is queried. Then, either a new value is generated and returned based on the selected scheme (increment, decrement, random, linear, sinus, etc.) or a command/script is run in order to perform a desired operation and return the value from the exit code of the executed command. On the other hand, if the time-based value changing option is selected, the value will automatically change in time, based on the selected method and scheme. Furthermore, value changing can be configured to start immediately, or at a specific time (absolute or relative to sysUpTime) (screen shot 1, screen shot 2).
Template-based sending of SNMP Trap and Inform notifications
MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator supports sending SNMP Trap and Inform notification messages to a number of targets. This feature is based on fully configurable trap templates that can be assigned to simulated SNMP devices. A trap template includes a list of SNMP notifications to be sent, the list of trap destinations and optional trap sending behaviour, like re-sending cycles, pauses, etc. Variable bindings included in the SNMP notifications can carry pre-defined fixed values or the actual current values of object instances in simulated SNMP agents at the time of sending the message. Furthermore, MG-SOFT MIB Browser Professional Edition application can be used for capturing the exact sequences of SNMP notification messages sent by real network devices and SNMP Agent Simulator can then import these notifications to effectively simulate the exact SNMP notifications sending behaviour of those devices (screen shot).
Support for SNMP over UDP and SNMP over TCP over IPv4 and IPv6
The software can simulate SNMPv1, SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 USM agents over UDP and TCP in IPv4 and IPv6 networks. Each agent is listening on its own UDP or TCP port and IPv4 or IPv6 address and responding to SNMP requests from that address/port. A group of IPv4 or IPv6 SNMP agents can be created with a single command, either based on user-specified IP range or port range (screen shot).
Support for SNMPv3 over TLS and DTLS (RFC 6353)
MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator supports also SNMPv3 Transport Security Model (TSM) and lets you simulate SNMP agents that support SNMPv3 over TLS and DTLS, both over IPv4 and IPv6 transports. Simulated agent instances support SNMPv3 Get, GetNext, GetBulk and Set operations over (D)TLS, as well as sending SNMPv3 Trap and Inform messages over (D)TLS. SNMP over (D)TLS utilizes X.509 public key infrastructure and provides strong security on the transport layer. The software incorporates a connvenient user interface for confguring SNMPv3 TSM security parameters (screen shot). and lets you select the desired transport protocol (e.g., TLS/TCP or DTLS/UDP) for simualting one or more SNMP agents (screen shot).
SNMPv3 USM with strong SHA-2 authentication and AES-192, AES-256 and 3DES encryption
The SNMPv3 USM (User-based Security Model) in MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator supports all standard security protocols: HMAC-MD5 and HMAC-SHA authentication; CBC-DES and CFB-AES-128 privacy protocols. In addition, the software supports also newer HMAC-SHA-2 authentication protocols as specified in RFC 7860, as well as stronger privacy protcols: CFB-AES-192, CFB-AES-256 and CBC-3DES (screen shot).
Displaying SNMP statistics for each simulated agent
SNMP Agent Simulator supports computing and displaying detailed SNMP traffic and performance statistics for every simulated SNMP agent. If enabled, statistics are shown in the lower window panel of the management console and include the total number of SNMP packets received and sent by the simulated agent, the number of requested and returned OIDs, the number of received SNMP messages by type, the number of sent responses, etc. For each statistical variable, the columns display the total, delta and average values as well as the peak values. Furthermore, collected SNMP traffic statistics can be displayed and monitored in a multi-line chart (screen shot).
Saving and loading simulation configurations
Once you have configured everything in the SNMP Agent Simulator management console, you can save the entire simulation configuration to disk for later use. This functionality allows you to save several fully configured simulated networks (e.g., where SNMP agents use different IP addresses, ports, agent snapshots, SNMP profiles, etc.; even different remote simulator engines can be used for simulating each network) and then quickly switch between simulating any of the configured networks (screen shot).
Included MIB Compiler for importing vendor specific MIBs
The bundled MG-SOFT MIB Compiler lets you quickly compile any SNMP MIB module so it can be loaded into SNMP Agent Simulator to enable viewing and editing agent snapshots, live agent templates, trap templates etc. in a user-friendly manner (where OIDs are resolved to names, certain values are resolved and properly formatted, etc.).
Available for Windows operating systems
MG-SOFT SNMP Agent Simulator runs on 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012, Windows 8.x, Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows 11, Windows Server 2022).