The SNMP standard provides a limited number of unsolicited messages (called traps) that are sent from a device to an SNMP application. These messages can be sent by the SNMP agent on the device to notify an SNMP application of a change in status. There are six standard traps (numbered 0 through 5) as well as vendor-provided traps (6):
| Trap # | Trap | Description | 
| 0 | Cold start | The device is rebooting itself and may change its configuration or the SNMP agent's configuration. | 
| 1 | Warm start | The device is rebooting itself but neither the device's nor the SNMP agent's configuration will change. | 
| 2 | Link down | One of the communication links for the device is down. | 
| 3 | Link up | One of the communication links for the device is back up. | 
| 4 | Authorization failure | The device has received a protocol message that is not properly authenticated. | 
| 5 | EGP neighbor loss | An EGP neighbor for which the device is an EGP peer is down and the peer relationship no longer exists. | 
| 6 | Vendor-provided traps | The SNMP specification lets vendors define enterprise specific traps, for example a trap that occurs on a particular vendor's router. |