Network monitoring tracks the health, performance, and security of network infrastructure through systematic data collection and analysis. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) has been the foundational protocol for network device management since 1988, operating through a manager-agent architecture where monitoring stations poll or receive notifications from network devices. Modern monitoring combines SNMP with flow-based protocols like NetFlow and IPFIX, syslog for event logging, and telemetry streaming for real-time insights. The key challenge is transforming raw metric floods into actionable intelligence — establishing meaningful thresholds, baselining normal behavior, and distinguishing signal from noise to prevent alert fatigue while catching genuine issues before they impact users.