management information base (MIB)
The Management Information Base (MIB) is a database that contains all data relevant to a management system in relational or object-oriented form. The term MIB is mostly used in connection with the Simple Network Management Protocol( SNMP). The SNMP MIB is a uniform, hierarchically structured, protocol-independent space for data objects. The MIB contains a large number of Managed Objects( MO) that are grouped together. These groups meet all the requirements for node computers on the Internet.
All objects in a Management Information Base are formulated uniformly in Abstract SyntaxNotation One( ASN.1), the Abstract Syntax Notation One originally designed for defining abstract transfer syntaxes in the representation layer of the OSI reference model, which provides standardization of abstract representations. Objects in the ASN.1 abstract syntax can later be used by other management protocols.
The MIB I known from the TCP/ IP world reflects protocols of the Internet. This MIB was superseded by MIB 2 in 1990 and has not been used since. MIB II has much more elements which include the different areas like Host-MIB, Bridge-MIB, Router-MIB and so on. In MIB II, the object types are arranged in eleven groups, each of which forms its own MIB tree. There are the following MIB groups: System, Interface, Address Translation, Internet, Internet Control Message Protocol( ICMP), User Datagram Protocol( UDP), Exterior Gateway Protocol ( EGP), CMIP over TCP/IP( CMOT), Transmission, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Grouping provides greater flexibility for implementing MIBs on agents.