Patent ID: 6973491

Claim:
In a network of devices, a method for monitoring the configuration and/or status of said devices, comprising the steps of: launching a device monitoring tool on at least one of said devices on said network; said monitoring tool launching one or more data collectors on one or more target devices, said target devices being the devices on the network that are to be monitored; said data collectors collecting status and configuration data about target devices and passing said data back to said monitoring tool; said monitoring tool uploading said data to a central site, wherein the uploading comprises splitting the data into multiple data chunks and transmitting the data chunks separately to the central site, the transmitting comprising transferring each of the data chunks over a link in the network between the at least one of said devices and the central site according to a transfer protocol wherein each of the data chunks may be subject to packetization; at the central site, merging the data chunks to create a data file; and at said central site, loading said data file into a database; wherein the monitoring tool is further adapted for listening to a storage location at the at least one of the devices to determine if the storage location has an available data file comprising at least a portion of said data from the data collectors and when determined available, initiating the unloading of said available data file to the central site.