What is the MIB in the Computer Network?

MIB stands for Management Information Base. It is a hierarchical virtual database of network (or other entity) objects describing a device being monitored by a network management system (NMS). A MIB can be used by Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and remote monitoring 1 (RMON1).

The MIB database of objects is intended to reference a complete collection of management information on an entity, such as a computer network; however, it is often used to refer to a subset of the database and is often called a MIB module.

It is a virtual database used to define the functional and operational aspects of network devices. The database should contain an object for each functional part of the advice that needs to be managed. These objects are usually grouped into different information modules. The information provided by the MIB represents the standard view and structure of management capabilities that are shared between the management station & device agent.

Each definition of a particular object contains the following information about an object, its name, data type, human-readable description, type of access (read/write) and object identifier.

One of the IP objects is as follows −

Here IPINHdr Error means that the number of input datagrams discarded due to errors in the IP address. Due to wrong checksums, version number mismatch, other format error, and time to live exceeded, error discovered in processing their IP options.

It can categorize the objects in the MIB under eight different group system interface (IF), Address translation (AT), Internet Protocol (IP), internet control message protocol (ICMP), Transport Control Protocol (TCP), User-Datagram Protocol (UDP) etc. These groups are defined under the MIB-1 object in the object identifier. Each group has defined variables and tables.