SNMP
Defining SNMP Communities
643 Cisco 500 Series Stackable Managed Switch Administration Guide
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• Authentication Password—If authentication is accomplished by either a 
MD5 or a SHA password, enter the local user password in either Encrypted 
or Plaintext. Local user passwords are compared to the local database. and 
can contain up to 32 ASCII characters.
• Privacy Method—Select one of the following options:
- None—Privacy password is not encrypted.
- DES—Privacy password is encrypted according to the Data Encryption 
Standard (DES).
• Privacy Password—16 bytes are required (DES encryption key) if the DES 
privacy method was selected. This field must be exactly 32 hexadecimal 
characters. The Encrypted or Plaintext mode can be selected.
STEP  4 Click Apply to save the settings.
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.