How to configure SNMPv3 on Cisco IOS Router

SNMPv3 is similar to SNMPv1 or SNMPv2 but has a completely different security model. SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 use a community-string that is used as the password and there’s no authentication or encryption.

SNMPv3 is able to use both authentication and encryption and has a new security model that works with users, groups and 3 different security levels. Users will be applied to a group and access policies will be applied to a group so that you can determine what groups have read or read-write access and which MIBs (Management Information Bases) they should be able to access.

Security Levels

SNMP offers 3 different security levels:

• noAuthNoPriv
• AuthNoPriv
• AuthPriv

Auth stands for Authentication and Priv for Privacy (encryption).

• noAuthNoPriv = username authentication and no encryption.
• AuthNoPriv = MD5 or SHA authentication but no encryption.
• AuthPriv = MD5 or SHA authentication AND encryption.

SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 only support noAuthNoPriv since they don’t offer any authentication or encryption. SNMPv3 supports any of the three security levels. When you decide to use noAuthNoPriv for SNMPv3 then the username will replace the community-string.

The community-string for SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 is send in clear-text. SNMPv3 is far more secure because it doesn’t send the user passwords in clear-text but uses MD5 or SHA1 hash-based authentication, encryption is done using DES, 3DES or AES.

Let’s take a look at a simple SNMPv3 configuration example on a Cisco IOS router.

Configuration Example

First we’ll create a new group and select a security model:

R1(config)#snmp-server group MYGROUP ?
  v1   group using the v1 security model
  v2c  group using the v2c security model
  v3   group using the User Security Model (SNMPv3)

We’ll call our group “MYGROUP” and of course we will select SNMPv3 as the security model. Next step is to select the security level:

R1(config)#snmp-server group MYGROUP v3 ?
  auth    group using the authNoPriv Security Level
  noauth  group using the noAuthNoPriv Security Level
  priv    group using SNMPv3 authPriv security level

By using the priv parameter we will select the AuthPriv security level. There are a number of options for security levels:

R1(config)#snmp-server group MYGROUP v3 priv ?
  access   specify an access-list associated with this group
  context  specify a context to associate these views for the group
  match    context name match criteria
  notify   specify a notify view for the group
  read     specify a read view for the group
  write    specify a write view for the group
  <cr>

The first item is the access-list, you can use this to select what IP addresses or subnets should be permitted for users. Optionally you can select certain views:

• If you don’t specify a read view then all MIB objects are accessible. Use this if you want to limit the number of MIBs that your NMS (Network Management Software) can monitor.
• Without a write view then nothing is writable, you will have read-only access.
• The notify view is used to send notifications to members of the group. If you don’t specify any then it will be disabled by default.

To keep this example simple we won’t use any views for now, this means that we’ll have full read access to all MIBs: