Modern networks and internetworks are larger, faster and more capable than their predecessors of years gone by. As we expand, speed up and enhance our networks, they become more complex, and as a result, more difficult to manage. Where years ago an administrator could get by with very simple tools to keep a network running, today this is simply insufficient. More sophisticated network management technologies are required to match the sophistication of our networks.

Some of the most important tools in the network manager's “toolbox” are now in fact software, not hardware. To manage a sprawling, heterogeneous and complex internetwork, software applications have been developed that allow information to be gathered and devices controlled using the internetwork itself. TCP/IP, being the most popular internetworking suite, of course has such software tools. One of the most important is a pair of protocols that have been implemented as part of an overall method of network management called the TCP/IP Internet Standard Management Framework.

In this section I describe in detail the TCP/IP Internet Standard Management Framework, looking at each of its architectural and protocol components and how they interoperate. The first subsection provides an overview of the network management framework itself and serves as an introduction to the sections that follow. The second subsection discusses the way that network management information is structured and arranged into information stores called Management Information Bases (MIBs). The third subsection describes the operation of the key protocol in TCP/IP network management, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Finally, I round out the section with a brief look at Remote Network Monitoring (RMON), an enhancement of SNMP—sometimes called a protocol, even though it really isn't—that provides administrators with greater management and monitoring abilities on a TCP/IP internetwork.