Tuesday 14 May 2013

What is SNMP and SNMP Trap?


First lets see what SNMP stands for. It's Simple Network Management Protocol. It is developed with the intention to manage growing elements in the internet. Why it is called Simple is that, it has only five types of messages. And the other fact is that it can rely on a connection-less or unsupervised network link.

SNMP is based on the Manager and Agent model. So that it's Manager provides interface between a human Network Manager and the Managing System while the Agent provides interface between the Manager and  Physical Devices which are being managed. 

SNMP trap is one of the five message types being used in SNMP protocol. The five types of messages that the SNMP trap is using are as follows.

  1. GET
  2. GET-NEXT
  3. GET RESPONSE
  4. SET
  5. TRAP

GET and GET-NEXT messages are sent by an SNMP Manager to the Agent. Upon the arrival of those messages, the Agent will send a GET RESPONSE message to the manager. SET is for requesting variable changes remotely. 

And at last comes the TRAP. This message type is quite different from the other messages. This message will allow an Agent to send messages to SNMP Manager spontaneously. Usually an SNMP trap is used by an Agent to aleart their Manager about a problem that they experienced.

Following diagram simply illustrates how an SNMP Trap works. 

Image Courtesy : http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk648/tk362/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094aa5.shtml

More information on SNMP Trap can be obtained from the following link:
http://www.dpstele.com/dpsnews/techinfo/snmp/snmp_trap_basics.php


Friday 10 May 2013

Does appeal to read always created along with sophisticated writing?

When we come across technical documents, we often try to keep them very very professional. So we unknowingly add very sophisticated words to maintain the standard of the document. 

Following are some points which I could come up with reading and writing documents.


#1
The document we are writing is not for showing off our language proficiency but for another human being  to read and understand . So if we forget this point then, ultimately the document will be futile as the reader wont be able to figure the things out. Or sometimes the content might make the reader bored.

Therefore I think that when ever we are writing a document, that document need to be written in a very simple way. For that we can avoid  lengthier sentences with sophisticated words.

#2
Sometimes we add too much of elaborated words to fill up the paragraphs or to present the document with some professionality. This could sometimes make the reader confused or could deviate the reader from the 'point of knowledge'.

#3
There is another important point to consider. That is the value of images in a document. Sometimes a document with thousand words can be replaced and described by a single image. And at another time, an image can be used at the places where we are unable to explain something. Above all, an image will make our document visually appealing to the reader. The image that we are using should not always be a very technical one such as a screenshot or a part of the real scenario. Instead we can use a conceptually relevant image with some text, which can give an idea about the content  of the page. This could even be some graphic image. 

The use of images and the value of them for technical documents is nicely explained at the "I'd rather be writing" blog. There the writer states that 'words combined with images result in incredibly appealing documents

Following is the URL for the blog post. 
http://idratherbewriting.com/2011/10/10/visually-appealing-documents-combine-text-with-images/

#4
Another thing to consider when writing is the font type and style. In writing, we tend to use fonts with smaller sizes and styles which are unclear. This happens knowingly or unknowingly. But this could make reading very uncomfortable.

So my conclusion is that the appeal to read does not always come along with sophisticated writing.

Image courtesy : http://languagearts.pppst.com/writingprocess.html