SNMP and Device Health Data

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is the standard protocol for collecting health and status data from network devices like routers, switches, firewalls, and servers. A central manager talks to small software agents running on each device, asking for values such as CPU load, interface status, and traffic counters. SNMP is the backbone of most monitoring systems.

SNMP has two roles. The manager (also called the Network Management System, or NMS) is the monitoring server that requests and stores data. The agent is software on each managed device that answers those requests and can send alerts. The manager polls many agents; each agent reports only about its own device. This manager-agent model scales to thousands of devices.