Added a Northbound SNMP Trap Receiver in Cisco PI 1.3, but not getting traps

Question

Hi;
I tried going into the Administration, System Settings, Notification Receivers menu and adding a receiver. The receiver was our  Zenoss 4.2.3 Resource Manager system. Zenoss has no problems  receiving traps from  IOS devices such as switches; that is routine for us. For example, we  see snmpTrap_Linkdown events from 2960s,etc.
However, even with all the possible events and severities checked in the PI GUI for the receiver, we did not get anything.
As a quick test I added my desktop computer as a receiver and ran Wireshark. Nothing comes through from Cisco PI. 
This is supposed to be UDP 162 stuff, so there ought not be a need for a handshake or need  to permit anything on the receiver side. I would expect to  see a total  fire-hose of traps after the receiver is added. But that reasoning conflicts with the need to set the SNMP Community string for the Notification Receiver...
I downloaded the logs from Cisco PI and grepped through all of them for the IPs & names of the test receivers, but found no messages.
Any idea what might be wrong? Do I need to restart something after adding the receiver?
I did notice that even if I supply a ficticious IP and name for the receiver, after it is added the "Operational Status" still says "Up" ...
I sure wish NCS came with a better help system - I can't find anything in the Cisco config guides that explains what a "Northbound" receiver is.
So confused,
Steve

Answer 1

Hi Matt, thanks for taking the time to reply.
>> Not sure why you are trying to do this with PI, this is really more of an ISE function
We don't have ISE and won't be getting it ... still trying to afford the > $100K for PI licenses. Our Content Filter vendor suggested using PI.
>>Is PI set to forward traps for client authentication?
I have all traps and severities checked. Not sure last week nothing showed up in Wireshark. Today I am seeing some UDP info from PI hitting my test workstation. However, when I associate and dissassociate my laptop, nothing comes through. Most of what I see are rogue notifications.
>> Are the controllers that PI is managing also set to forward the same traps?
In Configure,Controllers, , Management, TrapControl, all possible boxes are checked.
>> Is PI configured correctly to forward the traps you want?
Please see answer above.
>> Does your content filter have the right MIBs to decipher the traps correctly?
The content filter vendor says they will customize their software as needed, but the first step is to see traps getting forwarded, and right now, it appeards that PI is not forwarding what I would expect from the GUI settings. Let's worry about MIB stuff after we are getting the raw trap data.
Thanks,
Steve
Message was edited by: Stephen Crye, elaborated & provided latest info.