Use Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) monitoring to discover and manage network devices
Monitor device fault, availability, and performance
SolarWinds® Network Performance Monitor (NPM) uses SNMP monitoring to poll the management information bases (MIBs) on your devices to obtain critical performance metrics. With the SNMP monitoring tools in NPM, you can monitor network fault, availability, and performance of all compatible devices with the ability to create a customer monitor to poll an object identifier (OID) for devices not supported out-of-the-box.
NPM is designed to simplify the detection, diagnosis, and resolution of network issues before outages occur by using an enhanced display of all network device information in fully customizable dashboards and charts. With network management software, you can help ensure the availability of your network and analyze its performance to deliver business-critical applications and services to your end users.
Automatically discover network devices
Simple SNMP monitoring deployment
SNMP monitoring is designed to be easy to install and roll out on your network with NPM. For devices compatible with SNMP V1 or SNMP V2C, deployment only requires a plain-text community string to authenticate packets. NPM is even built to make it easy to set up SNMP-V3 compatible devices, which is traditionally more complex to set up and requires authentication and encryption credentials.
Once the SNMP device discovery is complete, users can get right to monitoring SNMP trap receivers, network devices, and overall network performance from a unified, intuitive web console. SolarWinds NPM also provides out-of-the-box network alerts, reports, and interactive charts so users can easily understand their network health and isolate performance bottlenecks.
Monitor SNMP and other protocols
With NPM’s robust toolkit, admins on the Orion® Platform can obtain a more in-depth look into network devices. NPM is built to monitor any device that sends syslog messages or responds to SNMP, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), API, and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). For Windows-based servers, NPM can work via the WMI protocol when used alongside SolarWinds Server & Application
Monitor.
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is also built to help you make the performance metrics you monitor into easily understandable and shareable views. Create dynamic and custom maps to visualize network
performance in real time. Dynamic maps can also be generated using custom HTML, so you can drill through network layers to identify network performance insights with ease.
Get More on SNMP Monitoring
Do you find yourself asking…
SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. It’s one of many network monitoring protocols, but SNMP is special because it’s designed to transmit messages between a central alarm master (an SNMP manager) and SNMP remotes (devices) at each network site. This allows for a more seamless communication channel between the multiple devices on a network and the monitoring tool.
SNMP monitoring helps IT admins manage their servers and other network hardware such as modems, routers, access points, switches, and additional devices connected to the network. With a better view of these disparate devices, IT admins can obtain clear insights into key metrics like network and bandwidth usage, or they can track uptime and traffic levels to optimize performance.
The SNMP architecture is based on a client-server model. In the case of network monitoring, the server is the monitor responsible for aggregating and analyzing information from clients on a network. The clients are the devices or device components, including switches, routers, and computers, connected to the network and monitored by the server.
Some key concepts of the SNMP monitoring process are:
- Object identifiers (OIDs) – An OID is an address used to identify a device and its status. It can be thought of an IP address for a device’s value. However, because OIDs are just a bunch of numbers separated by seemingly random dots, it can be hard for IT admins to decipher what device they’re viewing when they monitor large-scale networks.
- Management information bases (MIBs) – Admins use MIBs to translate numerical OIDs into text-based OIDs.
- SNMP traps – Traps are unsolicited messages sent from an agent to a management station when an important event is detected.
- SNMP polling – Polling is when a network managed station asks devices for status updates during regularly scheduled intervals.
- What is SNMP?
SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol. It’s one of many network monitoring protocols, but SNMP is special because it’s designed to transmit messages between a central alarm master (an SNMP manager) and SNMP remotes (devices) at each network site. This allows for a more seamless communication channel between the multiple devices on a network and the monitoring tool.
SNMP monitoring helps IT admins manage their servers and other network hardware such as modems, routers, access points, switches, and additional devices connected to the network. With a better view of these disparate devices, IT admins can obtain clear insights into key metrics like network and bandwidth usage, or they can track uptime and traffic levels to optimize performance.
The SNMP architecture is based on a client-server model. In the case of network monitoring, the server is the monitor responsible for aggregating and analyzing information from clients on a network. The clients are the devices or device components, including switches, routers, and computers, connected to the network and monitored by the server.
Some key concepts of the SNMP monitoring process are:
- Object identifiers (OIDs) – An OID is an address used to identify a device and its status. It can be thought of an IP address for a device’s value. However, because OIDs are just a bunch of numbers separated by seemingly random dots, it can be hard for IT admins to decipher what device they’re viewing when they monitor large-scale networks.
- Management information bases (MIBs) – Admins use MIBs to translate numerical OIDs into text-based OIDs.
- SNMP traps – Traps are unsolicited messages sent from an agent to a management station when an important event is detected.
- SNMP polling – Polling is when a network managed station asks devices for status updates during regularly scheduled intervals.
Discover, map, and optimize your networks with SNMP monitoring
Network Performance Monitor
- Auto-discover and monitor SNMP devices on your network with ease.
- Generate interactive topology maps to gain insights into network performance and health.
- Actively poll devices to obtain fault, availability, and performance metrics.