A few items for sale

[der Mouse]

> Just telnet to the SNMP server and [...]

Um...SNMP is not normally carried over UDP, not TCP, and thus is not
telnettable-to.  My first guess is you mean SMTP, but...

> send it the commands to get the messages.

Um, you don't do that with SMTP (and *certainly* not with SNMP).  SMTP
is used to *send* messages, not *get* messages.  You apparently mean
POP or IMAP or some such.

> When I teach networking we actually have an exercise where we do
> exactly that.  It's a little tricky, though, because a telnet client
> does not echo what you type.  It depends on the telnet server echoing
> the data back and it displays what it gets back.

This is true only of broken (or misconfigured) telnet clients.  Since
the default state of ECHO is off (see RFC 857), the server is not
supposed to be doing echoing (since ECHO will not be negotiated on when
speaking to something that does not speak telnet protocol); the client
must do any echoing that is to be done.

> Unfortunately, SNMP servers don't do that, so when you type the
> commands you can't see what you are typing.

*I* certainly can.  I'd guess you need to get a better telnet client.

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