Should the snmpEngineID be different for different routers or it depends on the snmp agents?

Question

While setting snmpEngineID is it necessary to provide different snmpEngineID for different routers or it depends on the snmp agent that resides on the router?

Answer 1

RFC 3411, "Architecture for SNMP Management Frameworks", states that snmpEngineId must be unique for each engine in a network. In practice, that's the same as unique per Agent.

So, if one router has several SNMP agents running on it, each of those agents will have its own snmpEngineId.

3.1.1.1. snmpEngineID Within an administrative domain, an snmpEngineID is the unique and unambiguous identifier of an SNMP engine. Since there is a one-to- one association between SNMP engines and SNMP entities, it also uniquely and unambiguously identifies the SNMP entity within that administrative domain. Note that it is possible for SNMP entities in different administrative domains to have the same value for snmpEngineID. Federation of administrative domains may necessitate assignment of new values.