in reply to can perl do this?

Take a look at SNMP_Session. It should get you started. This package is completely implemented in Perl and I have successfully tested it under SunOS and Windows.

There are other packages available, but they rely on the UCD-SNMP libraries (written in C), which must be compiled and installed.

Update: Other SNMP libraries can be found here.

--isotope
http://www.skylab.org/~isotope/