SNMP stands for Simple Network Management Protocol, and operates at the application layer in the OSI Network Reference Model. ASN.1 and BER provide the presentation layer. UDP and IP provide the transport and network layers. In the case of Control Solutions products, Ethernet provides the data link layer, and the physical connection is the RJ-45 connector.

SNMP provides access to data via a set of "variables" which have "names" constructed in a format defined by the SNMP protocol. An SNMP variable name resembles an IP address with integer number fields separated by dots (decimal points or periods), with the difference being that the SNMP variable name may have many more than the 4 fields found in the IP address. The collection of variables or "managed objects" found in an SNMP device is known as the Management Information Base (MIB).

The MIB provides the map of hierarchial order of all managed objects and how they are accessed. The MIB is defined at the source level using ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation ver. 1), and encoded for transmission using BER (Basic Encoding Rules). The set of rules used to specify the format used for defining managed objects that are accessed via the SNMP protocol is known as Structure of Management Information (SMI). All of this is generally transparent to the user of the Control Solutions i.CanDoIt software, but must be understood by developers wishing to develop applications that interface to i.CanDoIt at the host level.