SNMPv2

This section is very short as SNMPv2 is much of a failed attempt with no real support for it in the market place today, this is mainly due to competing and incompatible proposed standards.

SNMPv2 provided several advantages over SNMPv1, including:

Expanded data types (e.g., 64 bit counter)
Improved efficiency and performance (get-bulk operator)
Confirmed event notification (inform operator)
Richer error handling (errors and exceptions)
Improved sets, especially row creation and deletion
Fine tuning of the data definition language

SNMPv2 set out to provide commercial grade security including:

Authentication: origin identification, message integrity, and some aspects of replay protection;

Privacy: confidentiality; Case, Authorization and access control.

It also tried to establish suitable remote configuration and administration capabilities for these features.

The problem was that there was no agreement between some efforts to make this happen resulting in a number of proposed standards like SNMPv2c,SNMPv2u and SNMPv2* , SNMPv2c had the endorsement of the IETF but no security and administration whereas both SNMPv2u and SNMPv2* had security but lacked the endorsement of the IETF.

As the result of these the SNMPv3 workgroup was founded.