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 use AnyEvent::SNMP;
 use Net::SNMP;

 # just use Net::SNMP and AnyEvent as you like:

 # use a condvar to transfer results, this is
 # just an example, you can use a naked callback as well.
 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;

 # ... start non-blocking snmp request(s)...
 Net::SNMP->session (-hostname => "127.0.0.1",
                     -community => "public",
                     -nonblocking => 1)
          ->get_request (-callback => sub { $cv->send (@_) });

 # ... do something else until the result is required
 my @result = $cv->wait;

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This module implements an alternative "event dispatcher" for Net::SNMP,
using AnyEvent as a backend. This integrates Net::SNMP into AnyEvent. That
means you can make non-blocking Net::SNMP calls and as long as other
parts of your program also use AnyEvent (or some event loop supported by
AnyEvent), they will run in parallel.

Also, the Net::SNMP scheduler is very inefficient with respect to both CPU
and memory usage. Most AnyEvent backends (including the pure-perl backend)
fare much better than the Net::SNMP dispatcher.

Another major added feature of this module over Net::SNMP is automatic
rate-adjustments:  Net::SNMP is so slow that firing a few thousand
requests can cause many timeouts simply because Net::SNMP cannot process
the replies in time. This module automatically adapts the send rate to
avoid false timeouts caused by slow reply processing.

A potential disadvantage of this module is that replacing the dispatcher
is not at all a documented thing to do, so future changes in Net::SNMP
might break this module (or the many similar ones).

This module does not export anything and does not require you to do
anything special apart from loading it I<before doing any non-blocking
requests with Net::SNMP>. It is recommended but not required to load this
module before C<Net::SNMP>.

=head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES

=over 4

=item $AnyEvent::SNMP::MAX_OUTSTANDING (default: C<50>, dynamic)

=item AnyEvent::SNMP::set_max_outstanding $new_value

Use this package variable to restrict the number of outstanding SNMP
requests at any point in time.

Net::SNMP is very fast at creating and sending SNMP requests, but much
slower at parsing (big, bulk) responses. This makes it easy to request a
lot of data that can take many seconds to parse.

In the best case, this can lead to unnecessary delays (and even time-outs,
as the data has been received but not yet processed) and in the worst
case, this can lead to packet loss, when the receive queue overflows and
the kernel can no longer accept new packets.

To avoid this, you can (and should) limit the number of outstanding
requests to a number low enough so that parsing time doesn't introduce
noticeable delays.

Unfortunately, this number depends not only on processing speed and load
of the machine running Net::SNMP, but also on the network latency and the
speed of your SNMP agents.

AnyEvent::SNMP tries to dynamically adjust this number upwards and
downwards.

Increasing C<$MAX_OUTSTANDING> will not automatically use the
extra request slots. To increase C<$MAX_OUTSTANDING> and make
C<AnyEvent::SNMP> make use of the extra parallelity, call
C<AnyEvent::SNMP::set_max_outstanding> with the new value, e.g.:

   AnyEvent::SNMP::set_max_outstanding 500;

Although due to the dynamic adjustment, this might have little lasting
effect.

Note that you can use L<Net::SNMP::XS> to speed up parsing of responses
considerably.

=item $AnyEvent::SNMP::MIN_RECVQUEUE (default: C<8>)

=item $AnyEvent::SNMP::MAX_RECVQUEUE (default: C<64>)

These values specify the minimum and maximum receive queue length (in
units of one response packet).

When AnyEvent::SNMP handles $MAX_RECVQUEUE or more packets per iteration
it will reduce $MAX_OUTSTANDING. If it handles less than $MIN_RECVQUEUE,
it increases $MAX_OUTSTANDING.

This has the result of adjusting the number of outstanding requests so that
the recv queue is between the minimum and maximum, usually.

This algorithm works reasonably well as long as the responses, response
latencies and processing times are the same per packet on average.

=back

=head1 COMPATIBILITY

This module may be used as a drop in replacement for the
Net::SNMP::Dispatcher in existing programs. You can still call
C<snmp_dispatcher> to start the event-loop, but then you loose the benefit
of mixing Net::SNMP events with other events.

   use AnyEvent::SNMP;
   use Net::SNMP;

   # just use Net::SNMP as before

   # ... start non-blocking snmp request(s)...