Do you know what the following have in common: television broadcast studios, automated fare collection systems, airborne military platforms, energy distribution systems, and emergency radio networks? It’s SNMP, a protocol designed to manage a diverse set of networked equipment.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely used protocol designed to facilitate the management of networked devices from a central location. Designed originally for the management of devices such as routers and switches, its usage has grown rapidly to encompass the monitoring of nearly any electronic device one can think of.