MG-SOFT Trap Ringer Professional Edition

Main features


The following is a brief list of the main features in MG-SOFT Trap Ringer Professional Edition.

The software is available in four editions and three different platforms and some of the features listed below may not be available in all editions. For details, compare availability of certain features in different editions of MG-SOFT Trap Ringer Pro.

MG-SOFT Trap Ringer Professional Edition can receive SNMPv1, SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 TRAP notification messages and SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 INFORM notification messages. Due to its architecture and advanced design, Trap Ringer successfully receives and processes hundreds of SNMP notifications per second.
The Trap Ringer's main window can act either as a console viewer displaying real-time information about received notifications or it can load and display the contents of any log file created by Trap Ringer (e.g., a daily log file or a log file containing only filtered SNMP notifications). The left panel of the main window contains a list of received notification messages. Clicking a notification message in the list displays all details of the message in the upper-right panel. Clicking the enterprise line or a variable binding in the upper-right panel displays all information about the given OID in the lower panel, as retrieved from the relevant MIB module (screen shot). Trap Ringer now supports also modern high pixel density displays (UHD/4K).
Support for diverse SNMP notification monitoring and user-notifying options. The Output Manager Preferences window (screen shot 1) (screen shot 2) provides a convenient interface for configuring how the notifications should be logged or further processed. Received SNMP notifications can be viewed directly in the real-time console viewer (main window) and logged to any number of files. The software can send information about received SNMP notifications by e-mail to any number of recipients, as well as log it to the system log files (syslog, event log). Trap Ringer can also invoke external programs upon receiving SNMP notifications in order to start any number of specific actions by providing command line parameters for each of them, as well as generate and periodically update any number of HTML report files that let you monitor SNMP notifications by using a web browser (screen shot).
SNMP notification proxy forwarder. In addition to performing various user notifying and logging operations, Trap Ringer can also act as the SNMP notification proxy forwarder, meaning that it can forward received SNMP notification messages to other SNMP managers on the network. Moreover, it can also translate received SNMP notification messages and forward them as SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c or SNMPv3 Trap messages, or as SNMPv2c or SNMPv3 Inform messages (screen shot). In respect to SNMPv3, the software implements the User-based Security Model (USM) (RFC 3414), and the Transport Security Model (TSM) with support for SNMPv3 over (D)TLS (RFC 6353). Trap Ringer can forward SNMP notifications to any IPv4 or IPv6 target address, arbitrary UDP or TCP port or TLS/TCP or DTLS/UDP port. The latter two options are achieved by conveying SNMPv3 Trap and Inform messages over secure TLS or DTLS transport using X.509 public key infrastructure. Trap Ringer translates the notification parameters in accordance with the SNMP Coexistence specification (RFC 3584).
Trap Ringer supports IPv4 and IPv6 transport protocol and can receive SNMPv1, SNMPv2c and SNMPv3 USM notifications on any UDP and TCP port (screen shot).
Support for all standard SNMPv3 USM security levels and protocols: HMAC-MD5 and HMAC-SHA authentication; CBC-DES and CFB-AES-128 privacy protocols. In addition, CFB-AES-192, CFB-AES-256 and CBC-3DES privacy protocols are also supported in SNMPv3 USM and enable Trap Ringer to receive and decode SNMPv3 Trap and Inform messages encrypted with these stronger encryption protocols (screen shot).
Support for new HMAC-SHA-2 authentication protocols in SNMPv3 USM, as specified in RFC 7860. The HMAC-SHA-2 authentication protocols provide a higher level of security than original HMAC-MD5-96 and HMAC-SHA-96 authentication protocols specified in RFC 3414. The HMAC-SHA-2 authentication protocols supported by Trap Ringer are: HMAC-SHA-2-224, HMAC-SHA-2-256, HMAC-SHA-2-384 and HMAC-SHA-2-512 (screen shot).
Receiving SNMPv3 Trap and Inform notifications over TLS and DTLS. In addition to the standard SNMPv3 User-based Security Model (USM), MG-SOFT Trap Ringer implements also Transport Security Model (TSM) with support for SNMPv3 over (D)TLS (RFC 6353) and can be configured to receive SNMPv3 Trap and Inform notifications on any TLS/TCP and DTLS/UDP port (over IPv4 and IPv6) using X.509 authentication. SNMPv3 over (D)TLS provides security at the transport layer using X.509 public key infrastructure. (D)TLS protocol establishes a secure "tunnel" between communicating parties, through which SNMP messages are exchanged (in case of Trap Ringer - SNMPv3 Trap and Inform messages) (screen shot).
Trap Ringer employs the client/server architecture in a sense that the SNMP notification receiving module (server) is separated from the application's GUI (client). The server module, which runs uninterruptedly even when no user is logged on the operating system, receives SNMP notifications from the network and processes them according to applied configuration. It runs as a service/daemon application. Trap Ringer client (running on the same computer as server) is a regular GUI application that, when started, connects to the server and lets you view and manage received SNMP notifications, as well as control and configure both parts of the application.
Assigning severity levels and colors to SNMP notifications. Trap Ringer lets you assign different severity level icons and colors to SNMP Trap and Inform notifications in order to indicate their importance and provide a better overview of received SNMP notifications displayed in the main window (screen shot).
Integrated Search tool. The search tool lets you search any log file (console, daily log, ring log file,..) for SNMP notifications that match the search criteria. One can perform search by virtually any SNMP notification property, like the notification type (name), reception date and time, source address, community name, enterprise OID, included variable bindings, etc. Furthermore, active search operation behaves as a continuous display filter so all newly received SNMP notifications that match the search conditions are automatically added to the list of search results (until the search is cancelled). Search results can be exported to CSV (comma separated value) text files for external use (screen shot).
Comprehensive notification filtering capabilities and Create Filter from Notification Wizard. Trap Ringer provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface that lets you easily configure complex filters to capture only SNMP notifications with particular attributes (screen shot). SNMP Trap and Inform notifications can be filtered by virtually any attribute or combination of attributes. Furthermore, Trap Ringer now lets you select a received SNMP notification in the main window and run the filter wizard to generate a filter from it in order to enable or disable receiving SNMP notifications that have the same attributes (screen shot).
Trap Ringer can load any number of standard and private MIB modules (screen shot) that were previously compiled with the enclosed MG-SOFT MIB Compiler. Trap Ringer retrieves data from MIB modules to provide more valuable and meaningful information about received SNMP notifications to users.
Trap Ringer Pro for Windows can generate event messages containing information about received SNMP notifications in the Application log of the system event logging facility available on MS 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). Event messages can then be audited with the Windows Event Viewer tool (screen shot). Trap Ringer Pro for Linux and Mac, on the other hand, incorporate the ability to generate syslog messages instead of Windows event log messages and send them to the local syslogd daemon, which logs messages to the system log files (typically located in the /var/log directory) and optionally forwards them to remote syslog servers (screen shot).
Fully customizable Trap List window panel view (screen shot). Trap Ringer now lets users fully customize what attributes of received SNMP notification will be displayed in the Trap List window panel of the main window (using the multi-column or the advanced single-column display mode).
Export to CSV files. The information about received SNMP Trap and Inform notifications can now be exported from Trap Ringer to CSV (comma separated value) ASCII files for external viewing or post-processing purposes (screen shot).
Trap Ringer can resolve SNMPv1 enterprise-specific Traps not only through the Trap number value, but also through the value of the Enterprise field in the Trap PDU in order to correctly identify such Trap messages.
IP addresses from the received notifications can be resolved through DNS.
The software lets you fully customize what attributes of received SNMP notifications will be included into e-mail messages, events logged in the system log files, and passed to external applications launched by Trap Ringer. As an example of a generated e-mail message that was sent by Trap Ringer to the specified list of recipients when it received a generic 'coldStart' SNMPv2c Trap notification message see this screen shot.
Flexible and robust application design. Intuitive and easy to use graphical user interface (GUI) incorporates the latest industry trends in the user interface design and now looks perfect also on modern UHD/4K displays. Trap Ringer and MIB Compiler applications are now "aware" of the system display DPI settings (on Windows and Mac OS) and automatically scale the size of their GUI components (dialogs, buttons, icons) and text accordingly to achieve the best visibility and usability also on today's high pixel density (HiDPI) displays (screen shot).
New and updated MIB modules. Trap Ringer installs with a set of 379 standard IETF and IANA MIB modules, with roughly 28000 OID, textual convention and SNMP Trap definitions. The enclosed MIB Compiler lets you compile private (vendor-specific) MIB modules in no time by using the Batch Compile command.
Significantly updated and enhanced User Manual with numerous hints and usage examples will help you get the most out of MG-SOFT's Trap Ringer Professional Edition.
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