Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / In this thesis, the scalability issues of Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) in optical network management are explored. It is important to understand the effect of varying the number of nodes, the request inter-arrival times and the polling interval on the performance of SNMP and number of nodes that can be effectively managed. The current study explored the effect of varying these parameters in a controlled test environment using the OPNET simulation package. In addition, traffic analysis was performed on measured SNMP traffic and statistics were developed from the traffic analysis. With this understanding of SNMP traffic, an SNMPv1 model was defined and integrated into an OPNET network model to study the performance of SNMP. The simulation results obtained were useful in providing needed insight into the allowable number of nodes an optical network management system can effectively manage. / Civilian, Singapore Ministry of Defense