Patent ID: 7440408
Filing Date: 2008-10-21
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. In a networking environment, a method for identifying network elements and related information, comprising: providing a plurality of discovery plans in a specific format detailing how discovery is to be performed for at least one network element wherein each type or model of at least one network element has a corresponding unique discovery plan detailing how discovery is to be performed on the at least one network element and the appropriate telecommunications protocol necessary to communicate with the at least one network element, each discovery plan having computer-useable device-specific instructions receivable by a network-element-discovery component, such that the computer-usable device-specific instructions are followed in order to perform discovery on at least one network element and specify queries to issue to the at least one network element, information to extract from results of the queries, and how to create and populate discovered objects with the results, wherein discovery includes extracting information from the at least one network element based on the computer-usable device-specific instructions, and wherein computer-useable device-specific instructions include at least one of the following: commands or queries which must be issued to the network element, instructions on how to parse and translate the results received in response to the commands or queries, and instructions on how to create and populate corresponding schema objects in a device-independent manner; identifying at least one network element to perform discovery upon; selecting a discovery plan from the plurality to interface with the at least one network element; and using the selected discovery plan to extract descriptive data from the at least one corresponding network element.