<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:&quot;">Something lacking in a lot of environments is the ability to watch bandwidth throughout the network.  Being able to monitor this bandwidth is extremely helpful when troubleshooting random network issues and being able to determine where the problem is.  SNMP is built into most switches, routers, and firewalls these days and the reason to use it, in my opinion, far outweigh the reasons not to use it.  If you are using Cisco gear (and frankly if you aren't you should) here are a quick couple commands you can use to set up SNMP quickly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"> </p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:&quot;">IOS Commands:
snmp-server host &lt;monitoring host&gt; traps public
snmp-server enable traps
snmp-server community public</span>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:&quot;">ASA Commands:
snmp-server community public
snmp-server enable traps
snmp-server host inside &lt;monitoring host&gt; poll</span>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0;"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:&quot;">The &lt;monitoring host&gt; is a server that you have set polling the information from these devices.  A good program that we use in house at eGroup is SolarWinds and MRTG which I highly recommend.</span></p>