Patent ID: 7080141

Claim:
A system comprising: a network device having an identifiable configuration and including a monitoring agent configured for registering identifiable configuration information upon initialization of the network device, the identifiable configuration information describing the identifiable configuration and including network topology information related to the network device, the monitoring agent further configured for monitoring device operations relative to monitored parameters, the monitoring agent configured for generating a notification message based on an event where the device operations exceed at least one of the monitored parameters; a troubleshooting resource configured for requesting selected device state attributes associated with the event from the network device based on reception of the notification message; at least one data collection resource configured for receiving the identifiable configuration information upon initialization of the network device, and collecting the selected device state attributes associated with the event into an event message, the at least one data collection resource configured for collecting the selected device state attributes for events from a respective plurality of the troubleshooting resources via respective secure connections via an Internet Protocol (IP) network, a first database configured for storing the identifiable configuration information having been received from the at least one data collection resource, including the network topology information, for the network device; a second database configured for storing problem/resolution information for the network device according to known configurations; and a rules-based troubleshooting system configured for determining a presence in the second database of problem/resolution information for the network device based on correlating the identifiable configuration information retrieved from the first database and the corresponding selected device state attributes specified in the event message, the rules-based troubleshooting system configured for providing a service notification message as a response to the event and that selectively includes the problem/resolution information for the network device.