SilverCreek

The World's Best Selling SNMP Test Suite

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  • Set up in less than fifteen minutes
  • Choose Windows or Linux
  • Customize tests via Wizards, Script Generators, and more
  • Automate operation with unambiguous test results
  • Integrate with other test harnesses and test tools
  • Includes conformance, compliance, vulnerability, robustness, stress, and performance testing
  • Investigate failures and quickly resolve them with powerful diagnostic and analysis tools

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The Case for Pre-Deployment Testing SNMP Tests -- Make vs Buy? Finding the Best SNMP Test Tools
This FAQ addresses common questions about SNMP testing, examines alternative testing strategies, and illustrates important issues that make testing the SNMP protocol a unique proposition. 
Q:  We test our SNMP agent with popular network management applications and MIB Browsers, and it works just fine. Why would we need the SilverCreek SNMP Test Suite?

While there seem to be an infinite variety of software tools available for ordinary business tasks, when an engineering manager looks for protocol testing tools, the selection becomes quite limited!  Why?  Tests for network protocols, like SNMP are highly specialized and serve a limited market.  

The engineering manager has to carefully evaluate where and how he invests.  Should he buy a protocol test product or make the investment to create one?  Let's take a look at the factors and the costs.

 The test engineer’s job is to ensure bugs are found before products ship, thus saving the company money and helping to build the company’s reputation for shipping quality products. Research has shown that fixing software problems after products have shipped can be up to 32-times more costly than finding and fixing bugs during a product’s testing lifecycle.(1) For this reason, forward thinking organizations understand the importance of system test and the payback that results from doing comprehensive testing before products ship. 
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Authoritative SNMP Test Suite 

Whether your job is to find SNMP compliance problems or to fix them, the SilverCreek SNMP test suite is your most valuable ally. SilverCreek is a software product for design, quality assurance, and test engineers to find and fix bugs in their SNMP agent implementations. The SilverCreek SNMP software is so easy to use that anyone who can navigate a graphical user interface can quickly run a battery of individual, comprehensive tests. The tests are designed to detect and diagnose implementation errors in private and standard MIBs as well as SNMPv1, v2c, and v3 stacks and implementations. Yet SilverCreek is so powerful, extensible, and flexible, power users can create the ideal solution for virtually any testing environment.
SilverCreek is the Authoritative SNMP Test Suite -- designed to test implementations of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP agents) and standard and private MIBs (Management Information Bases). SilverCreek incorporates thousands of small, single function tests written in the Tcl scripting language to exercise one or a small number of parameters. The syntactic tests verify protocol compliance, error and exception handling, and boundary condition behavior. The functionality tests (semantic tests) verify performance, trap/alert/event/notification handling, counter accuracy, security, and many other implementation specific areas.

SilverCreek's SNMP engine is written in C++.  The testing interface is written in the interpretive Tcl/Tk scripting language.   Users may modify or extend test scripts without programming. 

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What you need to know about SNMP compliance testing

Whether your job is to find SNMP bugs or to fix them, the SilverCreek series of SNMP test suites is your most valuable ally. It’s so easy to use, anyone who can navigate a graphical user interface can automatically run a battery of thousands of individual, comprehensive tests, designed with the help of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) experts to detect and diagnose a broad spectrum of SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3 problems. Yet, it’s so powerful, extensible, and flexible, power users who know their way around a command-line interface can create the ideal solution for virtually any testing environment.

Point and click testing with the power of SilverCreek

The SilverCreek series proves that a powerful SNMP test suite doesn’t have to be difficult to use. A graphical user interface (GUI) allows users to automatically run all SilverCreek tests and save the results by pointing and clicking. The GUI also harnesses the powerful Test Suite Manager to simplify test customization, organization, and management.

Using the SilverCreek management information base (MIB) browser is just as easy. Clicking on any leaf automatically launches the SNMP Command Tool, which allows users to view the contents of the agent’s object identifier (OID) tree and issue GETs and SETs. Because the MIB browser combines SNMP GET and NEXT requests on modified object identifiers, it discovers MIB branches in a manner that is more efficient, more thorough, and more accurate than the average MIB walk. Combined with the MIB Lookup Tool and support for private MIBs, the SilverCreek MIB Browser boosts productivity to new levels.

As official as can be

The SilverCreek SNMP Test Suite was developed and refined by InterWorking Labs, Inc. with the help of the Advisory Board, comprised of key SNMP technology experts from the IETF. Three times per year, we attend the IETF meeting, comment on drafts in progress, and evaluate interoperability issues with other participants. The outcome of these meetings, as well as more than ten years of knowledge and experience gained working with leading SNMP authorities, is reflected in our products. So, you get the most accurate, credible, and comprehensive test suites possible.

SilverCreek - The Authoritative SNMP Test suite

All the tests and tools to find and fix bugs in your SNMP agent implementations and private MIBs. Tcl script source code is provided for the tests for easy customization and maximum flexibility for developers. Includes single CPU license, Developer's Guide and one year support. (Linux and Windows)

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A rich toolset



For probing, sniffing, and inspecting individual objects, components or subsystems of your product's SNMP implementation, the toolset includes:
  • a MIB browser that actively probes the agent for the true value of objects
  • a MIB compiler that allows you to add, compile, and automatically test your private MIB, or any IETF MIB
  • a Command Tool for issuing SNMP SET, GET, and GET-NEXT commands
  • an ODBC (Open Data Base Connection) tool, a powerful way to process test results and generate reports.
  • a Command Script Wizard to build complicated SNMP commands, generate and store requests as scripts and reload them.
  • a MIB Lookup Tool for quick and convenient access to information about a MIB object. Provides basic information such as descriptor name, OID, syntax, access, status, and index.
  • a MIB Scope Tool to isolate a portion of the agent's objects to focus testing on a specific set of objects
  • a Trap Monitor to visually examine the contents of all traps
  • a Trap Tester that works with the Trap Monitor to verify syntax, ordering, and correct indexing of the incoming event.
  • a Command Line Interface that allows command line SNMP requests outside of the SilverCreek application
  • a Packet Monitor that demonstrates the flow of traffic to an and from the agent under test in three output types: octet, pseudo-ASN.1, and/or summary. This facilitates debugging as all the low level traffic may be examined and analyzed.
  • the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key ignition and key change test module validates support for DH key agreement (as specified in the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification).
SilverCreek is available on:
  • Windows (Intel)
  • Fedora (Linux)(Intel)

 

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RFC References

You will find these RFCs in the SilverCreek installation directory. For additional Standard IETF track MIBs, visit http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html .

RFC 1155 Simple Network Management Protocol, Version 1 Structure and Identification of Management Information, SNMPv1

RFC 1157 Simple Network Management Protocol, Version 1

RFC1213 Management Information Base II

RFC 2790 Host Resources MIB

RFC 1901 Introduction to Community-based SNMPv2

RFC 3416 Protocol Operations for SNMPv2

RFC 3417 Transport Mappings for SNMPv2

RFC 3418 Management Information Base for SNMPv2

RFC 1910 User-based Security Model for SNMPv2

RFC 2011 SNMPv2 Management Information Base for the Internet Protocol using SMIv2

RFC 2012 SNMPv2 Management Information Base for the Transmission Control Protocol using SMIv2

RFC 2013 SNMPv2 Management Information Base for the User Datagram Protocol using SMIv2

RFC 2096 IP Forwarding Table MIB

RFC 2863 The Interfaces Group MIB using SMIv2

RFC 3410 Introduction to Version 3 of the Internet-standard Network Management Framework

RFC 3411 An Architecture for Describing SNMP Management Frameworks

RFC 3412 Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

RFC 3413 SNMP Applications

RFC 3414 User-based Security Model (USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv3)

RFC 3415 View-based Access Control Model (VACM) for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

RFC 2571 An Architecture for Describing SNMP Management Frameworks

RFC 2572 Message Processing and Dispatching for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

RFC 2573 SNMP Applications

RFC 2574 User-based Security Model (USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv3)

RFC 2575 View-based Access Control Model (VACM) for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

RFC 2576 Coexistence between Version 1, Version 2, and Version 3 of the Internet-standard Network Management Framework.

RFC 2578 Structure of Management Information Version 2 (SMIv2)

RFC 2579 Textual Conventions for SMIv2

RFC 2580 Conformance Statements for SMIv2

RFC 2665 Definitions of Managed Objects for the Ethernet-like Interface Types

RFC 2786 Diffie-Helman USM Key Management Information Base and Textual Convention

 


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