About IP Adapters

The IP Adapters use the various protocols of the IP protocol suite to establish connections with programs from which you want to generate events. With the IP Adapters, you are able to specify the connection method to the data source and the type of parsing that you want performed on the collected data. 

Data that is collected by using an IP connection is parsed into a Perl hash (name-value pair data tokens) by a parser that you specify. The parsed data is passed to a mapping function, which converts the data tokens into events. The events are sent to msend, which passes them to the cell.

For information about how and when an adapter collects data, see IP Adapter architecture.

The IP Adapters are bundled with three pluggable parsers. You can specify which parser you want to use as a parameter in the adapter configuration. For more information about parsers, see Using the SNMP Adapter Configuration Manager

IP Adapter architecture

The adapter architecture is a loop that is a central waiting state for a program. 

When an adapter is started, it registers to the loop. The loop checks to see if any file descriptors are active. When a descriptor becomes active, the adapter receives the new data.