There are two basic elements of network management:

• The Management Workstation, and
• managed network elements (printers, routers, servers, and so on).

The Management workstation gathers information about the network elements in its domain. It may do this either by polling them, or by having the network element “interrupt” it – which is known as a trap.

It also contains a user interface which allows a network administrator to configure and view the status of network elements, and an alarm system to notify people in the event of network faults.

A piece of code running on a network element which sends information about the hardware to a management workstation is called an “Agent”. Here we see a mobile agent, which is a piece of code that travels on the network and eventually reaches and runs inside a network element.