Which protocol does the WhatsUp Gold server use to monitor Alcatel switches?

• A. ICMP
• B. FTP
• C. SNMP
• D. SSH

Answer: (C)

SNMP is the protocol used for monitoring network devices like Alcatel switches. It lets a management server poll the device to collect key metrics—such as interface status, traffic counts, CPU and memory usage—and to receive alerts when something goes out of range. WhatsUp Gold relies on SNMP to query the switch’s published Management Information Bases (MIBs), which standardizes how the data is exposed across different vendors. That makes it the appropriate method for ongoing health and performance monitoring.

In contrast, ICMP is mainly for basic reachability checks (pings), FTP is for file transfers, and SSH is for secure remote login—these don’t provide the structured, ongoing performance data that SNMP delivers for monitoring.