Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Practice Exam

What is the primary function of SNMP Community Strings?

1. To identify routers on the network

2. To secure communications between the manager and agents

3. To segment network traffic

4. To allocate resources effectively

The correct answer is: To secure communications between the manager and agents

The primary function of SNMP Community Strings is to secure communications between the manager and agents. In the context of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), community strings act as passwords that grant access to the management information base (MIB) on network devices. There are typically two types of community strings: read-only and read-write, which determine whether the manager can only fetch data or also modify it. By utilizing community strings, network management systems can control and restrict access to critical management data on devices, ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized users or systems. This mechanism helps prevent unauthorized access and potential misconfigurations or breaches within the network. In other options, identifying routers relates more to network discovery protocols, segmenting network traffic deals with different techniques such as VLANs, and resource allocation concerns mechanisms like traffic shaping or Quality of Service (QoS). None of these directly align with the role of community strings in managing device communications securely.