It depends on what sort of s/w tools you are using I think. If you are using something along the lines of HP OpenView, then I would think you need to use SNMP to interact with the MIBs on your interface cards. As far as I know, a TDR for example won't interact with MIBs (although my one is fairly old, so I could be wrong), it will only give you statistics and information relating to your wire traffic, noise, etc etc.