Many challenges are being faced by business organizations that follow a digital-first policy. Along with digital transformation comes the responsibility of managing the IT infrastructure. Monitoring of all aspects of your IT infrastructure is necessary to identify possible threats. An organization cannot sit idle as it is monitoring the health of its software systems rigorously. Besides monitoring the health of software systems, there are many other elements of IT infrastructure that, need to be managed. Network devices are an indispensable part of IT infrastructure that helps in boosting service availability and reliability. SNMP monitoring has proved to be a vital solution for businesses looking to monitor their network devices.

Understanding SNMP

Before we learn about the best way to monitor internet devices, one should know the basic concept of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). SNMP is a widely used protocol for managing the network of the IT infrastructure. Management information is exchanged between network devices with the help of SNMP. SNMP can successfully monitor network devices connected to a LAN or WAN. Besides collecting information about devices connected to an IP, SNMP also helps in modifying device information.

One can monitor and manage hardware devices as well as wireless devices connected over any internet protocol. Some of the network devices that can be managed and monitored via SNMP are firewalls, routers, CCTVs, modems, access points, load balancers, switches, and many more. When you know about the performance of your network devices, you can make sure they are up and running all the time. As the uptime of network devices increases, service availability will be boosted.

SNMP itself is one of the real-time monitoring solutions. However, SNMP alone could not handle the complexity of network devices until it was coupled with AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations). Many business organizations have already witnessed the power of AI for application monitoring. AI-enabled SNMP can aid in monitoring the network devices closely and identifying any anomaly in real-time.

Components that work together in SNMP monitoring

Collecting performance data from network devices is not the sole responsibility of an SNMP monitoring system. SNMP monitoring is a broad concept that encompasses several micro-processes. Different components come together for SNMP monitoring. The major components of SNMP monitoring are mentioned below:

• SNMP manager

An SNMP manager is the central system that communicates with all the devices connected over the IT network. Every network device is connected with an SNMP agent. SNMP manager sends requests to agent-implemented network devices and collects their responses. It then places variables in the responses received from devices connected across the SNMP network.

• Managed devices

Every device you connect with the SNMP monitoring tool becomes a managed device. Some of the common managed devices in the IT industry are routers, printers, wireless devices, switches, load balancers, etc.

• SNMP agent

As discussed earlier, an SNMP agent collects responses from network devices and passes them to the SNMP manager. SNMP agents are installed locally and are software processes. Many managed security services providers USA are now providing effective SNMP agents. Whenever a query is generated by the SNMP manager, SNMP agents try to respond in real-time.

• SNMP MIB

The format of information exchanged within the SNMP system is defined by a MIB (Managed Information Base). Every SNMP agent maintains a MIB that stores the information collected from managed devices. MIBs act as a shared database between SNMP managers and agents. The data stored in a MIB can be used by IT teams for application performance monitoring, fault management, and other tasks. MIBs are saved within the SNMP network as text files. The format of information in a MIB can only be understood by MIB editors, SNMP agents and SNMP managers.

• SNMP OID

OID (Object Identifiers) is a single piece of information stored in a MIB. MIBs store scalar and tabular object instances that are transferred to the SNMP manager. OID can represent performance information like fan speed, service availability status, uptime, downtime, observability, etc. MIBs are responsible for hierarchically storing OIDs for SNMP agents and managers.

Why use an SNMP monitoring solution?

Since corporate organizations are looking for ways to expand their business, they heavily rely on their IT infrastructure for maintaining high service availability. However, the complexity of IT infrastructure also increases as you scale it per the customer demands. Often, IT teams ignore monitoring of network devices and end up creating a blind spot in their security. Blind spots are perfect for cyber attackers that are looking to deteriorate your service reliability. To monitor the performance of your network devices and fault management, SNMP monitoring is necessary.

Traditional SNMP monitoring tools could not handle the increasing complexity of network devices. It is why top AI cybersecurity companies in USA have come up with AI-enabled SNMP tools. The pros of AI-enabled SNMP monitoring for your business organization are as follows:

• You can automatically collect performance data from network devices with SNMP monitoring. You can use the insights to boost service availability and fault management. With high-end insights about the performance of network devices, you can solve performance issues before they hamper the service reliability.
• SNMP is helpful for large organizations that are looking to increase observability into their network devices. AI-led SNMP monitoring will help to discover all the network devices connected over an IP without any manual effort.
• SNMP monitoring provides IT teams with useful performance metrics like service reliability, uptime, fan speed, downtime, etc. These performance metrics can help IT teams in measuring the overall performance of their network devices.
• New-age SNMP tools act as AI automated root cause analysis solutions. If any network issue occurs within the IT infrastructure, SNMP monitoring will help you in finding the underlying cause for the network issue.

Conclusion

Business organizations are becoming more proactive in solving network issues. With SNMP monitoring, you can gain control of your network devices and make them efficient. Boost your service reliability by managing network devices with SNMP!