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Reality Check: What Can SNMP Do For Me?

SNMP can do a lot to make your network alarm monitoring more cost-effective and your network more reliable - if you clearly identify your network monitoring goals and have the right tools to achieve them.

The advantages of SNMP are:

• It's LAN-based. Moving your alarm monitoring off
  dedicated copper lines and onto existing LAN/WAN infrastructure creates significant savings. LAN data transport reduces installation and operation costs and transports alarm data more reliably.
• It's an open standard. SNMP is non-proprietary, fully documented, and supported by multiple vendors.
• It can be easily extended. SNMP is simple, but it's also flexible enough to describe almost anything. Vendors and users of SNMP equipment can add to the Management Information Base (MIB) to include nearly any kind of device.
• It provides a common management platform for many different devices. If it's supplied with the right MIB file, an SNMP manager can correctly interpret alarm data from any device that supports SNMP, creating greater interoperability between different parts of your network.

That's what's good about SNMP - but there's also some pitfalls that you have to watch out for. If you're not careful, it's easy to wind up with a system that costs too much and does too little.

You can avoid the risks (and guarantee the benefits) of your SNMP implementation by working with an experienced vendor who can help you accurately determine your network monitoring needs. To learn more, call 1-800-693-0351 and ask for your free Network Monitoring Needs Analysis.

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