Independent Thoughts

Simple Network management Protocol (SNMP) had been around since 1980’s when it was designed first to faciliate exchange of management information between network devices. I have heard the term since i had been in connected to the beatuful complicated world of software designing and building but never paid much attention till one day had been messing around with my home wireless network.

In RFC 1157 , SNMP is formally defined as :

“Implicit in the SNMP architectural model is a collection of network management
stations and network elements. Network management stations execute
management applications which monitor and control network elements. Network
elements are devices such as hosts, gateways, terminal servers, and the like,
which have management agents responsible for performing the network
management functions requested by the network management stations. The Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is used to communicate management
information between the network management stations and the agents in the
network elements.”

The three main use of SNMP which I know are :

Network configuration
Network Monitoring
Network Authentications