Patent ID: 8204979

Claim:
A client-computer monitoring-and-management system comprising: a monitoring-and-management server computer that generates commands for propagation to a client computer; a client computer that receives commands from the monitoring-and-management server, each command representing a management task that the monitoring-and-management server has identified as needing to be executed by the client computer; and an adaptive client/server control protocol that determines whether a server-to-client asynchronous notification facility is operational, when the server-to-client asynchronous notification facility is determined to be operational, asynchronously delivers command-availability notification from the monitoring-and-management server to the client computer, and when the server-to-client asynchronous notification facility is determined to not be operational, provides for polling of the monitoring-and-management server computer by the client computer in order for the client computer to detect commands generated by the monitoring-and-management server computer by receiving command notification through monitoring-and-management server responses to poll requests sent by the client computer.