# Alerting - SNMP Traps

### Overview

Alerts can send SNMP traps to other systems and management platforms. Typically these systems will be high-level managers, or alert aggregators, and you will only be setting up this type of alerting if you are an administrator or engineer responsible for interconnecting a number of separate platforms.

SNMP traps are simple, immediate datagrams and can be sent when any metric on which Highlight is reporting exceeds a threshold.

### Alert Setup

In the Edit Alert dialog box (example below) two specific fields for setting up SNMP trap alerts are:

<figure><picture><source srcset="/files/tRKx4rB52DxamVDAWPQm" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"><img src="/files/t7sjkChH72nt8AVoT09t" alt="Alerting Create Alert SNMP Trap"></picture><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

**Method:**  SNMP Trap

**Send to:**  the DNS name or externally-visible IP address of the SNMP trap receiver of the management platform (required field)

Refer to the [alerting page](/status/alerting/alerting-email.md) for details on all other fields in the create/edit dialog.

#### Notes

Highlight uses a default community string of “highlight” which is sent as part of the trap. There is no ability to change this when setting up a trap alert.

The source IP of the trap is determined by the Highlight system you logon to. Therefore it will be the IP address associated with DNS name *system*.highlighter.net where *system* is usually the name of your service provider.

### SNMP Trap MIB

Traps are sent based on the Highlight Trap MIB (HIGHLIGHT-TRAP-MIB), the latest version of which is available via email from [Highlight Support](broken://pages/1yoo8M0lEwunU7BVS8j9). Traps contain the following information:

<table><thead><tr><th width="199">Information</th><th width="120">Format</th><th>Details</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Watch ID</td><td>Number</td><td>Highlight’s ID number for the Watch which generated the alert</td></tr><tr><td>Watch Name</td><td>String</td><td>The short name (reference, mnemonic etc.) for the Watch</td></tr><tr><td>Folder Name</td><td>String</td><td>The name of the folder containing the Watch</td></tr><tr><td>Location Name</td><td>String</td><td>The name of the location containing the Watch</td></tr><tr><td>Level 3 metric</td><td>Number</td><td>Stability, Load or Health</td></tr><tr><td>Level 2 metric</td><td>Number</td><td>A reference for the element causing the alert, e.g. LinkStability</td></tr><tr><td>Metric value</td><td>Number</td><td>Current value of the level 2 metric, as a percentage</td></tr><tr><td>Fuel-gauge value</td><td>Number</td><td>Current value of the fuel-gauge which triggered the event</td></tr><tr><td>Description</td><td>String</td><td>Text description of the broken metric</td></tr><tr><td>Timestamp UTC</td><td>String</td><td>The UTC time at which the alert was raised</td></tr><tr><td>Timestamp local</td><td>String</td><td>The local time at which the alert was raised</td></tr><tr><td>Reporting Device</td><td>IP Address</td><td>The IP Address the trap came from</td></tr><tr><td>Switch critical port slot**</td><td>Number</td><td>The slot of the port if a critical port switch event</td></tr><tr><td>Switch critical port**</td><td>Number</td><td>The port if a critical port switch event</td></tr></tbody></table>

\*\*Optional OID only added to the trap if it's a switch critical port alert

You will need to load or install this MIB into your management platform (the application which receives traps).


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