Lansweeper Pro Tip #50 - MIB Browser & OID library for scanning SNMP enabled devices

With our MIB Browser and Custom OID scanning you can remotely scan SNMP-enabled Network Devices using our OID Library. It allows you to walk any MIB tree and determine which MIBs are supported by a particular network device. Search through the OID Library to find OIDs for your devices and add them to an OID scanning target. You can also easily import your own custom MIB files. Learn more here: www.lansweeper...
When scanning devices, once you enter in your network/SNMP credentials, you will undoubtedly get varying amounts of detail, depending on the type and configuration (or lack thereof) of the devices that you scan. While you could accept the data that is returned for the device and move on to other things, you can usually get more data if you dig a little deeper.
With the Lansweeper MIB Browser you can also browse and scan millions of precompiled, unique MIBs in our MIB Library. While Lansweeper scans using all standard MIBs (data hierarchies of device information, consisting of object identifiers, or OIDs), not all devices support them - and some use custom MIBs and OIDs unique to their equipment - resulting in missing information for the asset when you scan them.
SNMP in a Nutshell
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a robust protocol that network devices use to send and receive everything that you ever wanted to know about the device, and even more of everything you ever didn’t want to know about the device. From identification (name/make/model/serial/OS/firmware) to interface statistics (MAC addresses, duplex/speed, traffic statistics, etc.) to error messages, page counts, consumable levels, device age, birthdate, favorite movies and hobbies, to sending triggered messages/data/alerts to other devices - this protocol does it all. If your network device has the capability of using the SNMP protocol, it can be categorized as a ‘Managed Device' if you’ve ever heard that before.
How does SNMP Work?
I won’t get into too much detail here, but basically, SNMP is like an API or an HTTP request, there’s a handful of basic commands that a device uses in conjunction with a ‘MIB,' (Management Information Base) a tree-like organization of data that consists of data markers called OIDs (Object Identifiers).
Fortunately, Lansweeper has a powerful feature that allows you customize the SNMP requests to devices to obtain the missing information you need: Custom OID Scanning.
Example: A Small-Office Brother Printer that is Missing the Firmware Version
In this example in the video, I have a brother small-business multi-function printer, which I’m actually surprised supports SNMP given that it’s mostly an enterprise or higher-priced function. The only issue is, it’s missing a critical piece of information that I’d like to know, in order to ensure my printer works properly and doesn’t turn into a launchpad for a cyber-attack: the firmware version.
Sometimes things aren’t as straightforward - either you can’t find a MIB or any supporting information, or you browse a MIB in the MIB Browser and come up empty-handed. In these scenarios, it’s best to do what is called an ‘SNMPWALK’ - which is like the Lansweeper Device Tester tool, but traverses through the hierarchy and returns all the data that the device contains.
After you have the OID entry, you can add it to the ‘OID Scanning Targets’ and tell it to scan for the asset type of ‘Printer' and the Manufacturer of ‘Brother Industries, Ltd.’ which is what was returned from scanning it with Lansweeper.
Reporting Tips for Custom OIDs:
The built-in report ‘OID Lookup: All Scanned OIDs’ will quickly show you all scanned custom OIDs for your devices that contain them:
If you would like to add a single OID to a report, and not get multiple records for an asset if they have multiple OIDs, you can JOIN on the table via an ‘embedded select.'
Lansweeper Sites (Cloud)'s Reporting Section Makes reporting on OID’s Easy:
While all of these SNMP features reside in the on-prem (Classic) version, should you take the hybrid setup and link cloud to on-prem, you can report on the OID’s in a much easier fashion - simply modify an existing report, or make a new asset report to return the OID information - it’s much easier then doing the above SQL query:
SNMP scanning for information is never perfect - there will be missing information at times due to either looking for non-standard information, or due to a device not conforming or providing the standard information in the first place… but with a little bit of effort, and using Lansweeper’s OID Import, Library, Custom OID scanning, and powerful reporting, you can find exactly what you need to actually turn network devices into proper ‘Managed’ ones.
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