SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol

Since it was developed in 1988 it has become the de facto standard for network-monitoring and management. Because it is a simple solution, requiring little code to implement, vendors can easily build SNMP agents for their products. Perhaps most important, is that unlike other so-called standards, it is not a mere paper specification, but an implementation that is widely used throughout the world's networks.

SNMP is based on the manager/agent model and is referred to as "simple" because the agent requires minimal software. Most of the processing power and the data storage resides on the management system, while a complementary subset of those functions resides in the managed system.

To achieve its goal of being simple, SNMP includes a limited set of commands and responses. The management system issues Get, GetNext and Set messages to retrieve either single or multiple object variables or to establish the value of a single variable. The managed agent then sends an event notification, or a trap back to the management system to identify the occurrence of conditions such as a threshold that exceeds a predetermined value.

MIB - Management Information Base

A database describing objects that can be used and maintained by application software and accessed via SNMP. There are MIBs, or MIB extensions for almost every managed appliance enabling emote configuration and statistics gathering.