Patent ID: 8285704

Claim:
An apparatus for hosted searching of private local area network (LAN) information comprising: a LAN crawler deployed on a private LAN having a plurality of devices, the LAN crawler including: a collection module configured to collect, from the plurality of devices, information of a first plurality of items of interest, and a reporting module configured to report the collected information; and a hosted on-demand search system including a search server having a processor coupled to a memory including: a crawler interface configured to receive a report from the LAN crawler deployed on the private LAN, a database interface configured to maintain a private database for the private LAN, wherein the private database includes the collected information organized by the first plurality of items of interest, a user interface module configured to permit a user on the private LAN to search the private database and to provide an application rendered component as part of the user interface, and an application interface configured to receive a request to access the collected information in the private database from an add-on application, to provide the accessed information to the add-on application, and to receive from the add-on application the application rendered component to be displayed on the user interface; wherein the information of a first plurality of items of interest is obtained from the group consisting of a routing table of a router, a router configuration file of a router, an address resolution protocol (ARP) table of a switch, a bridging table of a switch, a switch configuration table of a switch, a software configuration file of a server, a resource utilization counter of a server, a log file of a server, custom application file of a server, user information of a directory server, group information of a directory server, a software configuration file of a workstation, a registry of a workstation, an operating system interface database of a workstation, a directory of a workstation, a resource utilization counter of a workstation, a log file of a workstation, and a configuration file of a network printer.