Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)

SNMP is a widespread industry-standard protocol for monitoring and managing network devices. The protocol specifies how a managed network device exposes data in variables and defines the way that these variables are organized and queried. The variables exposed by a device are defined, along with metadata, in a hierarchy called a Management Information Base (MIB). Network Management Software (NMS) on a separate server is used to query a managed device, like an ESA. SNMP also supports notifications called traps from managed device to an NMS.

An SNMP MIB is a tree structure, and the custom MIB for the ESA has its root nodes in the RFC defined SNMPv2-SMI MIB. This tree structure somewhat resembles Domain Name System (DNS) and, like DNS, the root-level portions are Internet standards, but with leaf nodes controlled by the organization. Also like DNS, the data is entirely numerical, but with a name-to-number mapping mechanism.