APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR REMOTE MAINTENANCE OF HOSTED NETWORK SERVICES

Abstract: The method and apparatus of the present invention provides solutions to the problems presented by currently available remote maintenance capabilities. The present invention mitigates the disadvantages of the prior art by embedding a MAINTENANCE SOFTWARE AGENT (MSA) (177A-177N), either on a server-by-server basis (175A-175N) or via a central maintenance server, allowing remote technical personnel (178) to accomplish a broad spectrum of service work from a remote location (150).

Description: APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR REMOTE MAINTENANCE OF HOSTED NETWORK SERVICES BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The subject of this invention relates to the data communications industry. Specifically, this invention describes a method and apparatus for performing maintenance operations on host equipment such as routers, switches and servers attached to data communications networks from a remote location. The remote maintenance can be accomplished via either wired or wireless connection. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION As the use of networks increases, more and more users are turning to network service providers for hosted data services. These service providers operate generally over the internet, and are thus referred to as Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. It should be noted however that the Internet is not the only possible network topology that provides services to multiple users. Thus the discussion below can apply to a wide variety of network architectures including, but not limited to, local area networks [LANs], wide area networks [WANs], intranets and internets. Further, data communications encompass a variety of data forms including, but not limited to, voice, video, audio, e-mail and software. For purposes of the present invention the discussion will center on the internet. Common to all network structures is the need for maintenance. This need arises from constant changes to hardware, software, data content, and the eventual failure of complex systems. Some failures are introduced artificially, as in attacks from so-called 'hackers,' while others occur naturally as a function of age and use. Whatever the root cause of a failure, the system or systems that form a network must be maintained by properly trained technical personnel. In the modern technological era these personnel are very specialized. The result is that one person may have responsibility for hardware, for example, client servers, while another may have responsibility for the software or site content. When a failure occurs, the technical person responsible for that particular function must be informed and react. Typically the reaction and repair must be rapid in order to minimize the deleterious effects on the client's site. Also typical of the modern era is the streamlining of businesses. This has an impact on the number of technical people available to maintain the servers associated with the network. In many cases the responsible person is not at the site where the failure occurred, thus travel is involved and time elapses without a solution. Recognizing that the problem of rapid response exists, the industry has developed a number of methods to improve the Mean Time To Repair [MTTR]. Some of these methods include remote service. For example, voice-to-voice solutions are used where a remote technical person interprets and responds to customer inquiries. While this method will help in the most general cases, most customers lack the technical ability to properly execute more complex technical tasks. Some network based solutions also exist currently. For example, web based libraries of known problems are listed by a number of hardware and software providers with further assistance given by on-line consultants. This solution suffers from the same limitations as the previous example, although the information available to the customer may be more up-to-date. One method for helping to assure a customer that their network services remain available on a constant basis is preventative maintenance. This concept provides a monitoring of the network infrastructure allowing a prediction of failure. When the monitoring service detects an abnormality, preventative action may be taken to keep the customer on line. This action may include swapping servers, for example. Examples of this type of service include Symantec PCanywhere software from Symantec, Cupertino, CA. and Provision Network Monitor software from Platinum Technology, a division of Computer Associates, Plaza Islandia, NY. As well as monitoring, these two packages offer some ability to control and/or configure servers remotely via a network. The result is a minimum level of remote maintenance that may solve a customer's problem, but the breadth of maintenance services available is severely limited. There are other solutions known in the prior art including calling a centrally located service center with software based troubleshooting suites, diagnostic evaluations via embedded maintenance data channels, server data collection techniques, and resident monitoring agents that automatically detect and respond to aberrant conditions, summoning the appropriate service resource. But many of these prior art methods as well as those previously described suffer from the multiple disadvantages of requiring the customer themselves to take some action and a narrow scope of maintenance services available. Thus the MTTR for all of these methods remains high due to the need to have a technical person on site. A further disadvantage to many of the current methods of remote maintenance is that those responsible for maintenance of the server may be unable to gain access simultaneously. This is because these methods are not multi-user friendly and will, at a minimum cause the system to slow down. In some extreme cases, these methods will cause the system to crash, taking the server completely offline. Routine maintenance tasks such as changing passwords or access privileges, updating page content, data base administration and the setting of counters and clocks become slow and difficult. One solution in use is to provide an alternate server for the time that the primary server is being maintained, however, this adds to the complexity, difficulty and cost of the remote service proposition. What is needed is a method for allowing the responsible technical person to provide detailed maintenance services from a remote location while still allowing the customer, or their clients, to access the server during routine maintenance procedures. This detailed maintenance includes manipulating the network architecture to accomplish more than configuration changes or content updates. Even more advantageously, the technical person should be able to accomplish the maintenance over a variety of connections including wired or wireless connections. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The method and apparatus of the present invention provide solutions to the problems presented by currently available remote maintenance capabilities. The present invention mitigates the disadvantages of the prior art by embedding a Maintenance Software Agent [MSA], either on a server-by-server basis or via a central maintenance server, allowing remote technical personnel to accomplish a broad spectrum of service work from a remote location. A number of service paths are provided by the present invention. Connection maybe made via a network using, for example TCP/IP, by phone via land-line and modem, or by cellular phone via cellular radio link to the Internet. A number of hardware devices may be used to enable the present invention including, but not limited to, hand-held devices such as a Personal Digital Assistants [PDA] (e.g. Palm Pilot from 3COM Corporation, Santa Clara, CA or Newton from Apple Computer, hie, Cupertino, CA), cellular telephones and pagers with alpha-numeric capabilities, and by laptop computer via wireless connection, for example, via Ricochet from Metricom, Inc., Los Gatos, CA. In a first embodiment of the present invention, the MSA is embedded in each customer server. When the customer's server has a problem requiring technical service, the responsible technical person uses methods well known to those of skill in the art to contact the device, use the MSA to conduct diagnostic procedures to evaluate and isolate the problem, and finally issue appropriate commands to resolve the problem. While this first embodiment works well enough for problems that do not take the customer's server out of service, such as changing the configuration or immunizing against the effects of a virus attack, there is a category of failures in which the server cannot be reached, hi a second preferred embodiment of the present invention a central maintenance server with an embedded MSA is used. This server can be contacted by the remotely located technical person and can be directed to perform maintenance on the failed customer server. Employing this embodiment reduces the number of MSAs and broadens the scope of maintenance services that can be accomplished remotely. Both of the embodiments of the present invention offer significantly improved MTTR and the ability of the customer to continue to access their server during routine maintenance as well as other advantages that will be discussed in detail below in conjunction with the figures. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIGURE 1 illustrates a high level block diagram of a system that can make use of a first embodiment of the method of the present invention. FIGURE 2 illustrates a high level block diagram of a system that can make use of a second preferred embodiment of the method of the present invention. FIGURE 3 is a detailed block diagram of a customer server that can make use of the method of the present invention. FIGURE 4 is a detailed block diagram of a central maintenance server that can make use of the method of the present invention. FIGURE 5 is a top level flow chart of the method of the present invention. FIGURE 6 is a flow chart of the Initial Set-up operation of the method of the present invention. Figure 7 is a flow chart of the Maintenance Session operation of the method of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION As described briefly above, there are a number of disadvantages with the current methods for maintenance of host services servers including lack of technical ability on the part of the customer, a narrow breadth of maintenance services provided, and an inability of the customer's clients to access a server during maintenance activity. The method of the present invention overcomes the disadvantages enumerated above by providing a method and associated apparatus that allows multiple customer clients to continue to access the content area of a server even while that sever is undergoing routine maintenance. Further, the breadth of maintenance services provided by the present invention go well beyond those available in the prior art. To accomplish this, the method of the present invention utilizes an embedded Maintenance Software Agent [MSA] mounted on the customer's severs or, alternatively, on a central maintenance server. As will be discussed in detail below, the MSA contains supervisory code and Application Programming interfaces [APIs] that, in combination with a data base, provide remote technical personnel with a comprehensive set of maintenance tools. The method of the present invention will be more clearly understood through a brief discussion of the environment in which the invention operates. Referring to Fig. 1, a high level block diagram of a system 100 that can make use of the present invention is shown. A Hosting Service 170 provides data services for numerous clients. In this configuration, the Hosting Service 170 is located geographically in Santa Clara. The Hosting Service 170 maintains a number of Routers 172, Switches 173 and Servers 175A-175N. As is known to those of skill in the art, this is not the only possible host services configuration and is shown here as an example only. Other configurations could be used without departing from the spirit of the invention. Each of the servers has an embedded MSA program 177A-177N, respectively. This program, discussed in detail below, contains the necessary data and process information to allow the server to be maintained by technical personnel. Additionally, these MSAs contain an interface that allows remote manipulation of the maintenance features of the program. Customer 120, located geographically in Chicago, uses the Hosting Service 170 to supply a server, in this case Web Server 175B. Should the Customer 120 desire to accomplish routine maintenance on this server, a number of options can be used. For example, Customer 120 could call the Hosting Service 170 and request an on-site engineer to accomplish the work in the traditional manner. If the technical person assigned to the Customer 120 is on the site, the service work can be done. However, if the technical person assigned to the Customer 120 is not on the site, and if the work is of an urgent nature, the customer may have to wait to have the work accomplished. Of course, if the server is down this could mean severe economic damage to the customer. Alternatively, the method of the present invention allows the technical person assigned to the Customer 120 to maintain the server from a remote location. By way of example, the Site Engineer 178, located at home, can dial into the system via telephone lines 110. Once logged onto the system, the Site Engineer 178 may interact with the MSA 177B to accomplish the desired work for the Customer 120. In a similar manner, the Site Engineer 178 could accomplish maintenance tasks on any of the servers at the Hosting Service 170. A further alternative allows so called self-servicing customers to access their servers and perform routine maintenance in a similar fashion. For example, Customer Engineer 125, in this example geographically located in Seattle, could use a hand-held device such as a Personal Digital Assistant [PDA] or a laptop computer operating via a Wireless Interconnect 127 and the Network 150 to access the Web Server 175B. Once access has been gained, performing the maintenance activity is the same as described above. As will be recognized by those of skill in the art, the Network 150 could be the Internet or any other network system comprised of the same or similar components without departing from the spirit of the invention. Further, a variety of devices may be used to access the MSA 177B without departing from the spirit of the invention. Examples of such devices include, but are not limited to, cellular telephones, cordless telephones, two way or smart pagers, desktop computers, laptop computers, palmtop computers, personal digital assistants, and two-way radios. Note, however, that all of these devices will eventually interface to the method of the present invention via a network. While the embodiment of the present invention shown in Fig. 1 provides many advantages such as increased maintenance flexibility and reduced mean time to repair [MTTR], it has the disadvantage that if the Embedded Agent 177B fails, or if the entire Web Server 175B fails, an on-site technical person will be needed to diagnose the problem. A better method would be to provide a dedicated maintenance server, or redundant maintenance servers, containing the necessary maintenance programs and having the ability to access all customer servers at the hosting service site. Fig. 2 provides a high level block diagram of a second, preferred embodiment of a system 200 that can make use of the present invention. As with the system shown in Fig. 1, a Hosting Service 270 provides data services for numerous clients. In this configuration the Hosting Service 270 is again located geographically in Santa Clara. The Hosting Service 270 maintains a number of Routers 272, Switches 273 and Servers 275A-275N. Also present in Fig. 2 is a dedicated Maintenance Server 279 containing an embedded MSA 277. This program contains the necessary data and process information to allow the server to be maintained by technical personnel. Additionally, the MSA contains an interface that allows remote manipulation of the maintenance features of the program as w l as the ability to access all other servers at the Hosting Service 270. The embodiment of the present invention shown in Fig. 2 overcomes the problem of a failed server by allowing remotely located technical personnel to diagnose any given server via the Maintenance Server 279. To prohibit possible problems associated with failure of a single maintenance server, a redundant maintenance server or servers could be used. Operationally, technical personnel such as the Customer Engineer 225, the Site Engineer 278 or the Customer 220 perform the maintenance tasks in a manner similar to that described for the system shown in Fig. 1. For example, the Customer Engineer 225, again located in Seattle, receives a request from Chicago to perform some type of server maintenance. Again using a wireless device operating via a Wireless Interconnect 227 and the Network 250 to access the Maintenance Server 279, the Customer Engineer 225 may perform the requested tasks on the Web Server 275B in the same manner as described above. Note that the communication path shown is for the maintenance activity only. Client access to the server takes place in a manner well understood by those of skill in the art and is not shown for simplicity. Referring to Fig. 3, a detailed block diagram of a customer server 300 such as may be used with the method of the present invention is shown. Note that the customer server 300 in Fig. 3 is the same as customer servers 175A-175N shown in Fig. 1, but is numbered differently here for clarity. Note also that the block diagram of the customer server discussed in conjunction with Fig. 3 is not the only server architecture that may be used to advantage with the method of the present invention, thus the scope of the invention is limited only by the claims. CPU 310, I/O circuits 340, Network Interface Card 350, and Power Supply 360 operate according to principles well known to those of skill in the art, thus will not be treated in detail and are shown to provide a context for the detailed discussion of the present invention that follows. Other I/O Ports 355 represent inputs from devices such as keyboards or trackballs, and outputs to such devices as printers or monitors. Each of these devices adhere to principles well understood by those skilled in the art. Memory 320 in conjunction with Data bus 335 and Address bus 330 also operate according to principles well known to those of skill in the art. Memory 320 consists of Read Only Memory [ROM] 322 and Random Access Memory [RAM] 323 that contain, among other data, the programs necessary to start and run the server. Such other data storage as hard disk drive, tape storage and external memory arrays may also be present without departing from the method of the present invention. Also contained in the memory of the Customer Server 300 is the area of RAM 323 dedicated to the storage of Customer Content 324, the Service Request Data Base [SRDB] 325 and the embedded MSA 326. The Customer Content area 324 contains such data as the customers web pages and other data as specified or generated by the customer or its clients. The SRDB 325 contains data used by the MSA 326 to authenticate service requests and determine the level of access allowed to the requestor. The MSA 326, described in detail below, contains the necessary programs to allow a service request to be processed. A first embodiment of the present invention is implemented using multiple embedded Maintenance Software Agents [MSA] 326. Each Customer Server 300 contains an MSA that may be accessed by technical personnel. The MSA 326 is made up of Application Programming Interfaces [APIs] 328 and 329, and a custom Supervisory Code program 327. hi the example shown, two APIs are present: Windows Management Instrumentation [WMI] 328 and Active Directories Service Interface [ADSI] 329. These APIs provide target-server specific maintenance functions that may be called and executed by a technical person. It will be obvious to those of skill in the art that more or less APIs may be present or that program types other than APIs could be present without departing from the spirit of the invention. Supervisory Code 327 contains program code and data necessary to authenticate technical personnel, select the proper API for the maintenance task to be accomplished, manipulate and track administrative data, and present an appropriate interface to the terminal being used by the technical person. For example, if the maintenance activity is being handled locally on a desktop computer, the Supervisory Code 327 provides the necessary output for a local monitor. If, however, the maintenance activity is being accomplished remotely from a text capable cellular telephone, the output of the Supervisory Code 327 is formatted for an alpha/numeric device. Supervisory Code 327 uses data stored in the SRDB 325 to determine the precise configuration of the MSA for each incoming service request. A detailed discussion, of the operation of the MSA follows . A second preferred embodiment of the present invention is implemented using a single embedded Maintenance Software Agent [MSA] 426 mounted on a dedicated maintenance server as shown in the block diagram of Fig. 4. The MSA is again made up of Application Programming Interfaces [APIs] 428 and 429 and a custom Supervisory Code program 427 in a manner similar to that described for Fig. 3 above. Also present is the SRDB 425, which is used in the same manner as described in Fig. 3 above. For this embodiment the Central Maintenance Server 400 may be directed to access any of the customer servers depicted in Fig. 2 by simply specifying the server's network address. The balance of the components shown in Fig. 4 operate in the same fashion as their counterparts in Fig. 3 and are not discussed in detail here. Thus CPU 410, Memory 420 including ROM 422 and RAM 424, Address bus 430, Data bus 435, I/O Circuits 440, Network Interface Card 450, Other I/O Ports 455 and Power Supply 460 all operate in accordance with principles described above or already well known by those of skill in the art. Operation of the method of the present invention may be best described using a series of flow charts. Beginning with Fig. 5, an overall flow 500 of the method of the present invention is shown. The method is entered at step 510. This occurs when, for example, a maintenance request has been received from a customer wishing some form of maintenance activity on their server. Recalling from Fig. 1 above, there are numerous paths and/or technical persons who may invoke the method including self servicing customers, remotely located service personnel or local maintenance personnel. At step 520 a connection is made to the server. In the case of the first embodiment of the present invention, the connection will be directly to the customer's server, for example, 175B in Fig. 1. In the case of the second preferred embodiment of the present invention, the connection will be to a central maintenance server, for example 279 in Fig. 2. In either case, once the connection has been made, the person seeking to accomplish the maintenance logs into the MSA at step 540. Note that the connection to the server may be made from a variety of sources including locally via a Local Area Network [LAN], remotely via a Wide Area Network [WAN], via the Internet, by wireless eel! or satellite. Further, a variety of devices may be used az described above. At step 550 the MSA determines if the requestor is authorized. If the result of the decision at step 550 is No, the process is exited at step 580. If the result of the decision in step 550 is Yes, the requestor is passed to step 600 to perform initial set-up operations. As will be discussed in greater detail below, set-up operations consist of a number of steps to provide the appropriate user interface and identify the target server. Once the initial set-up is complete the actual Maintenance Session is entered and executed at step 700. Activities accomplished inside this step include all those possible functions available to a technical person using the relevant API. By way of example, if the ADSI API is used, the technical person may build code that allows viewing or manipulation of network resources allocated to the target server. Specific examples include, but are not limited to, resetting time clocks, viewing and modifying access codes, changing or adding site content, or interrogating server functions in order to determine a required corrective action. It should be obvious to those skilled in the art that other APIs can be used such that the scope of the maintenance functions available to the remote technical person is limited only by the functionality enabled by the particular API. A specific example of a maintenance session enabled by the method of the present invention is given below in conjunction with Figure 7. Once the Maintenance Session 700 is completed, the process passes to step 570 where the requestor logs off. The process then terminates at step 580. It is important to note that, unlike many of the prior art methods, clients of the customer may continue to access the customer's server without interference. Obviously, if there is a severe technical problem with the server, all access, including that of a maintenance requestor, may be impossible. In this scenario the second preferred embodiment of the present invention proves to be superior, since the maintenance requestor can log onto the central maintenance server and accomplish a wide variety of tasks. Again using the appropriate API, the technical person could, for example, use diagnostic functions to determine the state of the CPU, memory, peripheral devices or port status of an apparently inaccessible server to assist in the determination of a remedial action. Redundant techniques well known to those of skill in the art may be used to provide a backup to the central maintenance server, such that a technical person may always be assured of access to the MSA. Fig. 6 provides the detail of the Initial Set-up operation 600 introduced above. The requestor enters the process at step 610 from step 550 of Fig. 5. At step 620 the requestor is presented with a menu of terminal types and at step 630 makes the appropriate selection for the maintenance session to follow. The reason that this is required is that the MSA may be executed from a variety of connections and devices, thus the agent must be configured to provide outputs and accept inputs appropriate to the device/connection being used. At step 640 the requestor is again presented with a menu; this time to select the API required for the target server that is the object of the maintenance session. At step 650 the requestor makes the selection and the process is returned to the main flow at step 660. As with the Display Interface Menu 620 above, the selection of a specific API is needed since the MSA must be configured for the target server. For example, if the target server is a Windows NT platform, the most likely API selected would be the WMI (328 of Fig. 3 or 429 of Fig 4). However, if the target server were a MicroSoft Windows platform, the ADSI API (329 of Fig. 3 or 428 o Fig. 4) would be the most likely selection. As will be recognized by those of skill in the art, other APIs or maintenance tools in software code format could be presented in the menu as well. Thus one of the advantages of the present invention is the ability to expand the scope of maintenance services available. Once the MSA is properly configured, the requestor may begin the actual maintenance session. As will be known to those skilled in the art, there are many different maintenance functions that can be contemplated through the use of APIs, but by way of example, the session described below centers on updating access privileges for a target server. Other maintenance services could be accomplished without departing from the spirit of the invention. Fig. 7 presents the detailed flow for a typical Maintenance Session 700. The Maintenance Session is entered at step 710 from the main process flow. At step 715 the requestor enters their username and password. A user authentication decision is made at step 717. If the requestor's username and password are valid, the process passes to the Server OK check at step 720. If the username and password were incorrect, the process passes to step 719 where a decision is made to either retry the authentication or disconnect the requestor. Note .that the details of the retry mechanism are not shown, but are accomplished by methods well known to those of skill in the art. Supposing that the requestor has been authenticated at step 717, the data contained in the SRDB [325 of Fig. 3 or 425 of Fig. 4] provides a list of the access privileges and the servers accessible to the requestor. At step 720 a decision is made as to the present status of the server to be maintained. If the server is OK flow passes to step 760 where a service menu is presented to the requestor. If, on the other hand, there is a problem with the server, as might occur if a virus were present, flow passes to step 725. Assuming for the moment that the target server is not OK, step 725 determines if the server is alive or if it is totally unresponsive. If the target server is unresponsive, remote problem solving will likely be unsuccessful, so flow passes to step 730 where the requestor escalates the problem to the appropriate resource for resolution, and processing returns to the main flow at step 790. If the server is alive, the Check Server Status operation at step 740 passes status data to the requestor. Based upon this data the requestor determines if the target server can be recovered remotely at step 745. If the answer is No, then again the problem is escalated at step 730, otherwise, the requestor may perform the appropriate recovery at step 750. Once the target sever has been recovered, flow returns to step 720 for a new determination as to the status of the server. Returning to step 720, and now assuming that the answer to the Server OK decision is Yes, the requestor is presented with a menu of services at Display Service Menu step 760. For purposes of this discussion, the requestor selects Update Access at step 770. At step 780 the requestor performs the needed update or updates and, when finished, flow passes to step 785 where the requestor indicates whether there are more tasks to be accomplished. If the answer is Yes, flow returns to step 760 where the menu is again displayed. If the answer is No, flow returns to the main process at step 790. In this way the requestor, in this case a technical person located remotely and accessing the MSA via a wireless cellular telephone, is able to make the desired updates in a minimum amount of time and without the need for on-site intervention. . A first advantage of the present invention is the ability, to reduce the MTTR for service requests. This is accomplished by permitting responsible technical personnel to access the MSA in a variety of ways from both local and remote locations. Thus the need to have a technical person on site is significantly reduced. This in turn provides substantial economic and operational advantages to the users of the present invention. A second advantage of the present invention is the ability to allow continued access by multiple users of a target server during routine maintenance activities. This is done by placing the maintenance functions in an embedded Maintenance Software Agent. This agent contains the necessary supervisory, interface and functional code to access a variety of target servers without the need to take them offline. Still a third advantage of the present invention is that it is platform independent. Through the use of APIs a broad spectrum of hardware/software platforms may be addressed remotely by providing the technical person with a menu of interface models and software maintenance tools. A fourth advantage of the present invention is a scope of maintenance services that is broader than those historically available. This is accomplished as a result of the programmable nature of the API resident in the MSA. The responsible technical person has the ability to generate custom test commands that may be tailored to each problem encountered, greatly improving the diagnostic capability of remote maintenance. A fifth advantage of the present invention is the ability, via a central maintenance server with the MSA embedded, to diagnose and potentially recover servers that appear to be unresponsive but that report recoverable status. Thus a remote technical person can interrogate, diagnose, and command a server that is alive but unresponsive to the extent that problems causing the server to appear unresponsive may be corrected. A sixth advantage of the present invention is its expandability. As new APIs appear, they may be added to the MSA and made part of the resident tools available to the remote service person. Other types of software may also be added to increase the flexibility and functionality of the services available to technical personnel wishing to accomplish remote maintenance operations.

Claims: WHAT IS CLAIMED IS: 1. A method of supporting remote maintenance of a network hosting base, said method comprising the steps of: receiving a remote request at a network hosting base with a plurality of servers, each of which includes a maintenance software agent, said network hosting base including a set of network hosting devices; authenticating said remote request; identifying a selected maintenance software agent operating on a selected server of said plurality of servers; specifying a target network hosting device from said set of network hosting devices; and executing said selected maintenance software agent to alter the operation of said target network hosting device. 2. The method of claim 1 wherein said receiving step includes the step of receiving a remote request initiated at a wired node. 3. The method of claim 1 wherein said receiving step includes the step of receiving a remote request initiated at a wireless node. 4. The method of claim 1 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data server as said target network hosting device. 5. The method of claim 1 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data router as said target network hosting device. 6. The method of claim 1 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data switch as said target network hosting device. 7. A method of supporting remote maintenance of a network hosting base, said method comprising the steps of: receiving a remote request at a network hosting base with a maintenance server storing a maintenance software agent, said network hosting base including a set of network hosting devices; . authenticating said remote request; specifying a target network hosting device from said set of network hosting devices; and executing said maintenance software agent to alter the operation of said target network hosting device. 8. The method of claim 7 wherein said receiving step includes the step of receiving a remote request initiated at a wired node. 9. The method of claim 7 wherein said receiving step includes the step of receiving a remote request initiated at a wireless node. 10. The method of claim 7 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data server as said target network hosting device. 11. The method of claim 7 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data router as said target network hosting device. 12. The method of claim 7 wherein said specifying step includes the step of specifying a data switch as said target network hosting device. 13. The method of claim 7 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with a supervisory program module. 14. The method of claim 7 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with an applications programming interface module. 15. The method of claim 7 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with a database. 16. The method of claim 15 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with a database including a table of authorized users, a table of passwords, and a table of network hosting devices. 17. The method of claim 7 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with an active directories service interface. 18. The method of claim 7 wherein said executing step includes the step of executing said maintenance software agent in connection with a windows management instrumentation interface.

Inventors: SINGH BHUPINDER, SINGH, BHUPINDER
Applicants: CONXION CORP, CONXION CORPORATION
Application year: 2001
Main classification: G06F15
IPC codes: H04L12