Reexamination Certificate
1996-06-28
2001-04-24
Barry, Lance Leonard (Department: 2756)
Reexamination Certificate
active
06220768
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Embodiments of the present invention relate to network asset management and to method and apparatus for automatically surveying a network.
The development of so-called intranets, e.g., private networks operated typically using the TCP/IP protocol suite creates problems of management and administration. System administrators need to know what equipment is connected to the network and its configuration. The information is necessary for user support, network planning, corporate financial statements, software purchasing etc.
However, many intranets include thousands of nodes. Thus, surveying the network manually is a lengthy process. First, the physical location of each node must be known. Often, even this information is difficult to obtain and maintain since extensions to a network may be made without notifying the system administrator. Then, the system administrator (or a surrogate) must visit each and every node. For each node, he or she records the equipment there. To learn which operating system is installed, the MAC address, the amount of RAM, the node name, the host ID, and other configuration information, he or she must operate the system.
The survey process is thus quite cumbersome and may take several weeks, by which time the information collected early in the process may well be partially obsolete. Furthermore, the survey process requires skilled labor, otherwise available for other network administration tasks.
A network management protocol known as SNMP exists for providing external access to network management information resident at a network node. However, its primary application has been monitoring network performance rather than asset surveying.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An efficient asset discovery system is provided by one embodiment of the present invention. For networks having 3,000 nodes, equipment and configuration information may be collected in a few hours, even with no previous information collection. Certain implementations exploit services available at the nodes including TCP/IP related applications and remotely executable configuration information commands. The asset discovery system may be operated as a stand-alone tool or as an automatically invoked component of a more complete asset database management system. In a preferred embodiment, the asset discovery system operates non-intrusively with no need for installation of special software at surveyed systems. Furthermore, the asset discovery system need not write information to disk storage at the surveyed systems.
One aspect of the invention takes advantage of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to collect survey information for a TCP/IP network. SNMP provides that an MIB (Management Information Base) is maintained at most nodes operating TCP/IP. The MIB includes management objects, one or more of which include information identifying node equipment and configuration. In accordance with the invention, an asset discovery system may invoke SNMP to poll available MIBs in a TCP/IP network. The asset discovery system then extracts the node equipment configuration information from the responses and stores it to develop an asset configuration database.
In one embodiment, a method for surveying a network includes steps of: 1) sending a plurality of SNMP variable value requests via the network, each of the plurality of requests addressed to a different address in a range of address space; 2) receiving a plurality of replies to the plurality of requests, each of the replies originating from a different address in the range; extracting information from each of the replies, the information characterizing assets at the nodes receiving the plurality of messages and generating the replies; and 3) developing from the extracted information an asset database characterizing a current configuration of assets at the nodes generating the replies.
A further understanding of the nature and advantages of the inventions herein may be realized by reference to the remaining portions of the specification and the attached drawings.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5185860 (1993-02-01), Wu
patent: 5282270 (1994-01-01), Oppenheiner et al.
patent: 5596723 (1997-01-01), Romohr
patent: 5651006 (1997-07-01), Fujino et al.
A press released issued on Dec. 4, 1994, by SunService, a division of Sun Microsystems, indicating availability of an asset survey reporitng service taking advantage of asset survey software.
Case, J., et al., “A Simple Network Management Protocol; RFC 1157”Internet Request for Comments, No. 1157, May 1990.
McCloghrie, K., “Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP-based internets; RFC 1156”Internet Request for Comments, No. 1156, May 1990.
Barry Lance Leonard
Sun Microsystems Inc.
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