I seem to remember that there was a webinar on network monitoring basics (SNMP, WMI, polling, etc.) that Solarwinds did a couple of weeks ago. I was unable to attend and I have been waiting for it to be available on the SW website.
When will it be there?
I think this is the link your looking for:
http://www.solarwinds.com/resources/webinars/GeekSpeak/HowNetworksWork/index.aspx