SNMP

Simple Network Monitoring Protocol: a standard protocol for communicating system status and administration information. SNMP clients (usually called "agents") send information about changes in system status ("alerts") to an SNMP server ("monitor" or "manager"). They also respond to the monitor's queries for current status, and may be written to accept some administrative commands from the manager as well. The current version of SNMP is SNMPv3, which includes security provisions.