SNMP
Defining SNMP Communities
533 Cisco Small Business 200, 300 and 500 Series Managed Switch Administration Guide (Internal Version) 
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Defining SNMP Communities
Access rights in SNMPv1 and SNMPv2 are managed by defining communities in 
the Communities page. The community name is a type of shared password 
between the SNMP management station and the device. It is used to authenticate 
the SNMP management station.
Communities are only defined in SNMPv1 and v2 because SNMPv3 works with 
users instead of communities. The users belong to groups that have access rights 
assigned to them.
The Communities page associates communities with access rights, either directly 
(Basic mode) or through groups (Advanced mode):
• Basic mode—The access rights of a community can configure with Read 
Only, Read Write, or SNMP Admin. In addition, you can restrict the access to 
the community to only certain MIB objects by selecting a view (defined in the 
SNMP Views page).
• Advanced Mode—The access rights of a community are defined by a group 
(defined in the Groups page). You can configure the group with a specific 
security model. The access rights of a group are Read, Write, and Notify.
To define SNMP communities:
STEP 1 Click SNMP > Communities.
This page contains a table of configured SNMP communities and their properties.
STEP  2 Click Add.
This page enables network managers to define and configure new SNMP 
communities. 
STEP  3 SNMP Management Station—Click User Defined to enter the management 
station IP address that can access the SNMP community. Click All to indicate that 
any IP device can access the SNMP community.
• IP Version—Select either IPv4 or IPv6.
• IPv6 Address Type—Select the supported IPv6 address type if IPv6 is 
used. The options are: