The SNMP protocol was introduced in 1988. Overtime security had been added (1991-1992). Also several version improved versions have been published (SNMPv2[1] and SNMPv3[4]) The goal is to allow automation of network management by establishing a standard protocol supported by all network devices for configuration and monitoring.

Using SNMP enabled devices network administrators can automate the tedious and error prone task of changing the configuration of the network by using an administration interface which in turn will automatically re-configure each device on the network using SNMP. By having a unified protocol a single administration application can manage an entire network of heterogeneous devices.

Another use of SNMP is to monitor the state of the network. The protocol defines a special message called a trap that triggers an agent governing a device to send an event stream back to the administrator. Management applications can periodically pool the devices to obtain an up-to-date overview over the network.

There are project existing [2] that facilitate the conversion of SNMP traces into formats that can be easily displayed. However, the user interface of the tools is either incomplete or not very well suited for the task at hand. The python converter presented converts SNMP and flow traces into a network animator file that can be viewed using the network animator(NAM). While the basic task of seeing the interaction dynamics is accomplished NAM does a very pour job at graph layout. Conversely the analyser based on JUNG does a very good job for the layout, but it does not display the actual interactions (the messages passed along the connection).

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