In my experience the S in SNMP is anything but simple. Conceptually it is simple, but once you add MIBs in (which describe the data) it gets really complicated.

In my experience the S in SNMP is anything but simple. Conceptually it is simple, but once you add MIBs in (which describe the data) it gets really complicated. SNMP support in actual devices seems to be more of a box ticking exercise than anything else now-a-days. It works for the basics but trying to do anything more complicated reveals a lot of bugs in the implementation. I think there is a lot of importing an SNMP library and calling it done SNMP implementations in devices! Take the Q-BRIDGE-MIB for an example - one I know well. That is a standard implemented by switches so they can configure VLANs for you which sounds great. Does it work? Well sort of - switch manufacturers have invented a lot of ways of getting the implementation wrong so you end up with a translation layer for every switch type. The security of SNMP is terrible too. In theory SNMPv3 has better security, but very few devices actually implement it, and it is, you guessed it, really really complicated. Only run SNMP on a private (non internet connected) network!