Network management system 10 is communicatively coupled to network devices 14 via enterprise network 6 through NAT device 16. In some examples, NAT device 16 may be a firewall device. Network management system 10, in some examples, forms part of a device management system, although only one device of the device management system is illustrated for purpose of example in FIG. 1. In the example of FIG. 1, network management system 10 is not connected directly to any of the network devices 14.

Once network devices 14 are deployed and activated, administrators 12 may use network management system 10 (or multiple such network management systems) to manage the network devices using a device management protocol, provided the administrators 12 add the network devices 14 to network management system 10. As mentioned above, network management system 10 may not have access to the private IP addresses of network devices 14.

One example device protocol is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) that allows network management system 10 to traverse and modify management information bases (MIBs) that store configuration data within each of managed network devices 14. Further details of the SNMP protocol may be found in Harrington et al., RFC 3411, “An Architecture for Describing Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) Management Frameworks,” Network Working Group, the Internet Engineering Task Force draft, December 2002, available at tools.ietf.org, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.