SNMP (simple network management protocol) Not exactly the best way to control a network device. But it is what we have. Plus, every machine tries to do someth

SNMP (simple network management protocol) Not exactly the best way to control a network device. But it is what we have. Plus, every machine tries to do something different with the non-standard stuff. And different parts of the APIs (called MIBs) from the same vendor follow different reference conventions, so you end up asking a lot of (mostly useless) data to be able to change something from up to down. Avoid it if you can and use something simpler, like sshing to the device.