SNMP Monitoring

SNMP monitoring uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to monitor and manage equipment on your network. Almost every piece of equipment on a company's LAN or WAN can be polled for SNMP monitoring. Equipment manufacturers can provide a management information base (MIB) that describes which items within that piece of equipment can be queried via SNMP. This information can then be used for SNMP monitoring.

SNMP Monitoring Benefits

SNMP monitoring is better than ping, port or URL monitoring, because SNMP monitoring can be proactive. SNMP monitoring can identify when a piece of equipment is starting to have trouble so corrective action can be taken before it becomes critical.

SNMP Monitoring Issues

The problem is that few hosting companies are willing to learn a specific device's MIB so they can provide SNMP monitoring. If your computer system and network is truly mission critical SNMP monitoring can make all the difference. You will either need to commit the internal resources to learn how to work with MIBs and SNMP polling or find a hosting company that offers SNMP monitoring.