When we ask the question "What protocol is on the network?", we are really asking "who's the master?".

The first scenario is this: You have an SNMP network with a number of SNMP devices. You have a device that does not talk SNMP, but you want to integrate it into your SNMP network. In this instance, we say that SNMP is the "protocol on the network".

There are many other scenarios that are variations on these themes. The main thing to ask is, "Who's in charge" of communications. That will be the "protocol on the network".

SNMP protocol most often speaks in terms of Manager and Agent. The Agents would be the devices on the network that will respond to SNMP Get/Set requests. The Manager is the head end system that will initiate SNMP Get/Set requests. In master/slave terms, the Manager is the master, and the Agent is the slave.

Assuming you just read the column to the left, the slave would simply be on the opposite end.

SNMP is not defined as a peer-to-peer protocol in terms of relationships between the devices. However, even if it was, we still usually have some notion of a primary controller with one or more subordinate controllers which we might refer to as "slaves". In the case of SNMP, the protocol clearly specifies the role of Manager (master) versus Agent (slave). The "slave" in SNMP is simply a device which responds to queries only when queried, and never generates queries on its own.

If we have a device which was manufactured as as SNMP agent, but we want it to be a slave on a non-SNMP network, this possibility is supported for some of the protocols using Babel Buster gateways. When we want to put this SNMP device on a non-SNMP network, we answer "SNMP" to the question "What protocol does the device talk?"