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Welcome to the comprehensive user guide for SNMP Switch Manager—a powerful Home Assistant integration designed for monitoring, active port administration, and visualization of managed network switches.
This wiki is your complete reference manual for:
- 🔧 The SNMP Switch Manager Home Assistant Integration
- 🎛️ The custom SNMP Switch Manager Lovelace Card
SNMP Switch Manager enables you to monitor, manage, and diagnose your managed network switch hardware directly from Home Assistant:
- 🎚️ Active Port Administration: Native
switchentities for physical ports allow you to administratively turn switch ports On (Up) or Off (Down). - 🔌 Graceful Offline Handling: Displays a clear "Setup failed: will retry" status if unreachable at startup, marks entities as
Unavailableat runtime, and automatically issues self-healing persistent notifications with custom offline imagery to simplify troubleshooting. - ⚡ Interactive PoE Controls: Real-time per-port Power over Ethernet (PoE) monitoring and active toggling to reboot hung IP devices or disable power output on specific ports.
- 📶 Advanced Bandwidth Tracking: High-accuracy bandwidth sensors (RX/TX bits per second and cumulative RX/TX byte counters) with user-defined inclusion/exclusion filters.
- 🌡️ Chassis Health Metrics: Consolidated environmental metrics including temperature sensors, fan speeds, CPU utilization, memory allocation, and power supply unit (PSU) status.
- 🔄 Dynamic OID Database: A self-updating, background-running community database that automatically downloads the latest vendor MIB maps every 6 hours and reloads the integration seamlessly without requiring a Home Assistant restart.
- 🚀 Community PR Engine: Define custom OIDs, interface classification tokens, or vendor filters in the integration's settings UI, then submit them directly to the main GitHub repository via an automated Pull Request using the secure GitHub Device OAuth Flow.
- 🔑 Enterprise Security: Full support for both SNMP v2c (community strings) and SNMP v3 (secure authentication via HMAC-SHA/MD5 and encryption via CBC-DES).
The system consists of two complementary components that work together:
- Communicates with your switch via standard SNMP (v2c or v3).
- Dynamically classifies ports (
physical,virtual, orunknown). - Applies naming normalizations and exclusion filters.
- Exposes data as clean, standardized Home Assistant entities and/or rich attributes.
- Supports writing commands back to the switch to toggle link state, PoE, or update port descriptions.
- Renders a beautiful visual representation of the switch’s physical port layout.
- Uses color coding to represent operational status and link speed (e.g. 10M, 100M, 1G, 10G+).
- Displays environmental health graphs and PoE consumption directly on the dashboard.
- Integrates quick actions and diagnostics panels dynamically.
One of the most important design features is how data is exposed inside Home Assistant. Depending on your system size and performance preferences, you can configure how metrics are stored:
| Capability | 🧠 Attributes Mode (Recommended) | 📊 Sensors Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Rich data is stored as attributes on a small, fixed number of parent entities. | Standalone Home Assistant sensor entities are created for every individual metric. |
| Entity Count | Extremely Low. A 48-port switch creates only ~50 entities. | High. A 48-port switch with bandwidth and PoE can create 250+ entities. |
| History Logging | Only operational status is tracked in HA recorder history. | Full historical graphs and statistics are maintained by Home Assistant for every metric. |
| Card Integration | Highly optimized. Lovelace card extracts metrics directly from port attributes. | Works well, but requires additional entity-lookup mapping. |
| Use Case | Best for high-performance home labs, large switches, and visual dashboards. | Best if you need to build automation triggers, historical graphs, or standard helper sensors. |
For the best experience, we recommend reading through the documentation pages in order:
- 📦 Installation & Prerequisites – Switch SNMP security setup, write permissions, and HACS download steps.
- ⚙️ Integration Configuration – Step-by-step guide to the modular options menu, SNMP v3 fields, bandwidth rules, port renaming, and custom OIDs.
- 🌡️ Diagnostics & Health Metrics – Comprehensive details about CPU, Memory, Fans, PSUs, PoE budgets, and the dynamic community OID database.
- 🖧 Supported Switch Matrix – List of verified devices, vendor-specific quirks, and how to verify your switch's active controls.
- 🚀 Community Submissions – Learn how to contribute custom OIDs, interface classification tokens, and vendor filters back to the repository safely (preventing frivolous entries).
- ❓ Troubleshooting Guide – Resolving SNMP v3 handshake errors, missing ports, slow updates, and write failures.
- 📖 FAQ – Quick answers to common questions about security, OIDs, and customization.
💡 Tip: We strongly recommend starting with Attributes Mode and setting up the Lovelace Card for the most premium, high-signal, and clean network dashboard experience.