SNMP req from host in syslog

[Haploid]

Hi, I am kind of a newbie, so I hope I am describing this ok. We have two Cisco 6509 routers serving as a primary and secondary router for our department. When checking the syslogs, we often times get the error:

%SNMP-3-AUTHFAIL : Authentication Failure for SNMP req from host x.x.x.x

The x.x.x.x is always a computer inside our internal network, and is different almost every time. Sometimes the computers are wireless laptops, sometimes they are client workstations, it seems relatively random. The error appears in the Syslog events for both routers at the same time and multiple errors are usually within several seconds of each other. On average, there are about 3-5 authentication failure per router. Does anyone have any insights as to why these internal computers are sending SNMP requests to our routers? All I can find on the Cisco site for information regarding this error message is that a computer with an incorrect community name could generate this error, but I am trying to figure out why these computers are attempting SNMP traffic with the routers at all. Thanks for the help.

 

[vipergg]

This is a client configuration issue . You would have to go on the clients and find out why they have snmp enabled on their workstation . In most cases you do not want clients to have this type capability . the reason you are seeing this in the logs are the 6509's have "permit lists" configured that only let certain addresses pull snmp data but it will also report whoever is trying to pull data illegally so that is why it shows up in the log . Catos boxes have to ability to have permit lists for both snmp and telnet .