Patent ID: 7827261

Claim:
A management device comprising: a first network interface device to connect to and to interface with a first network; a computer processor coupled to the network interface device; a computer readable memory accessible by the computer processor, wherein the computer readable memory contains computer instructions executable by the processor to: maintain knowledge of a plurality target network devices on the first network; maintain knowledge of a defined device management protocol supported by a device management client running on a host device; for each of the target network devices on the first network for which the device management protocol is not known to the management device, determine an associated device management protocol by: sending command inquiries to the target network devices on the first network according to a plurality of device management protocols in an iterative process; and for each target network device that responds to a command inquiry in a device management protocol, populating a database to associate a responding target network device with the corresponding device management protocol; map the device management protocols associated with target network in the database to the defined device management protocol supported by the device management client running on the host device; convert command inquiries received from the device management client according to the mapping from the defined device management protocol to corresponding device management protocols associated with each of the target network devices in the database; and convert device management data received from each of the network target devices according to the corresponding network management protocols to a format according to the defined device management protocol.