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A Management Information Base (MIB) is a virtual information store of managed objects used to describe and manage a system. In network management, SNMP generally provides access to those objects, while the Structure of Management Information (SMI) defines how they are described. A MIB is not necessarily a separate, physical database.
What does MIB stand for?
MIB stands for Management Information Base. The term does not mean “Management Information Database.” RFC 3418 describes it as a virtual information store through which managed objects are accessed.
A MIB is best understood as a model of management information: it identifies the objects that can be managed and describes them. It is not necessarily a program or database service running on a device, nor does one MIB automatically include every metric a device could expose.
How do MIB, SNMP, and SMI differ?
| Term | Role |
|---|---|
| MIB | The virtual store or model of managed objects. |
| SNMP | The protocol generally used to access managed objects. |
| SMI | The notation and rules used to define managed objects, including their names and syntax. |
These terms describe connected parts of network management, not interchangeable names for the same thing. RFC 1902 explains that related objects are organized in MIB modules written using an adapted subset of ASN.1 called SMI. RFC 3418 says MIB objects are generally accessed through SNMP and defined using SMI mechanisms.
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What is a managed object, and what is an OID?
A managed object is a piece of information defined for management, such as a value associated with a network interface or an SNMP entity. Each object type has a name, syntax, and encoding. Its name is an administratively assigned object identifier (OID), which identifies the object type. A human-readable descriptor may be used alongside the OID for convenience.
An object type is different from an object instance. The type names the definition; the type together with an instance identifies a specific occurrence, such as a value for a particular interface. As an analogy—not formal RFC terminology—think of the object type as a field definition and the instance as a particular occurrence of that field.
Object definitions also specify access characteristics. Do not assume every object can be changed: whether an object is readable or writable depends on its definition and the implementation.
What is the difference between MIB-II and the SNMP MIB?
These standards cover related but distinct scopes; RFC 3418 does not replace all of MIB-II.
| Standard | Scope | Publication |
|---|---|---|
| RFC 1213 (MIB-II) | Managed objects for network management of TCP/IP-based internets; its MIB-II object identifier prefix is mib-2. |
March 1991 |
| RFC 3418 (SNMPv2-MIB) | Objects describing the behavior of an SNMP entity. It obsoletes RFC 1907 and includes a subset of SNMP object definitions that had appeared in RFC 1213. | December 2002; STD 62 |
For the broader framework and SMIv2 context, RFC 1902, published in January 1996, describes how related managed objects are organized into modules. RFC 3418 states that its module complies with SMIv2 as described in RFCs 2578, 2579, and 2580.
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