Does the order of attributes in SNMP Traps matter

Question

I am using some SNMP traps for monitoring of applications. Now I was told that some monitoring systems might have problems if the order of the attributes within the the traps was not the same as defined in the MIB. From the Complexity of the OIDs that could easily be used to re-order the attributes I was surprised by this, so I tried to find the relevant section of the RFC, but I could neither find something that said any ordering is allowed nor anything that said it is important. In other secondary documentation about SNMP I was not able to find anything usefull either.

So this is more a curiosity question, that could however also help in further projects using SNMP. Could anyone point me to the correct documentation as far as this problem is concerned. Or is this something that one software might handle while other software might not handle this and I should check the actual documentation for that software?

Conspicuous

Answer 1

I found the relevant document.

Section 3.1.2 specifies:

The VARIABLES clause, which need not be present, defines the
ordered sequence of MIB objects which are contained within
every instance of the trap type.  Each variable is placed, in
order, inside the variable-bindings field of the SNMP Trap-
PDU.  Note that at the option of the agent, additional
variables may follow in the variable-bindings field.

Thanks to the person who pointed this out to me.

Conspicuous

In SNMPv2 a) TRAP-TYPE is renamed to NOTIFICATION-TYPE and b) VARIABLES is renamed to OBJECT See Also : net-snmp.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/TUT:snmptrap#Variables – Xena