Patent ID: 6105031
Filing Date: 2000-08-15
Classification: H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
A system for accessing data describing a plurality of network devices, comprising:a data structure containing data describing each of the plurality of network devices, each network device having a network device type;wherein the data structure has one partition for each network device, wherein the partitions are stored in an array, and wherein each partition is identified by an index into the array and wherein each network device has ports and each partition has a header section for storing data that is not port specific and a port data section for storing data describing the ports;a standard interface for providing a common mechanism for accessing the data structure to read and write the data describing the network devices;a plurality of external systems that use the standard interface to access the data describing the network devices; andwhereby data describing network devices of new types can be added to the data structure and accessed by the external systems without modify the external systems.