Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Practice Exam

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Prepare for the CCNA Exam with detailed questions and thorough study materials. Each question is accompanied by hints and explanations to facilitate your learning process. Get ready to ace the CCNA Exam!

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What is the purpose of the SNMP TRAP message?

To request information from an agent
To initiate an event report to the manager from the agent
To acknowledge a successful change
To start a network diagnostic

The correct answer is: To initiate an event report to the manager from the agent

The purpose of an SNMP TRAP message is to initiate an event report from an agent to a manager. In the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), agents are devices monitoring the operation of network components. They can detect certain events or changes in the network, such as system failures, threshold breaches, or configuration changes. When such an event occurs, the agent sends a TRAP message to the network management system (the manager) to notify it of this event. This mechanism is crucial because it allows for proactive monitoring of the network. Instead of the manager constantly polling the agents for status updates (which would be resource-intensive), TRAPs provide an efficient way for agents to inform the manager immediately when significant events occur, thereby enabling quicker responses to potential issues. This functionality differentiates TRAP messages from other SNMP operations, such as requests for information, which involve the manager soliciting data from the agents rather than the agents reporting data autonomously.