Patent ID: 8880578

Claim:
A method comprising: communicating between a plurality of hardware devices and a management module controlling the plurality of hardware devices based on a simple network management protocol (SNMP), the plurality of hardware devices and the management module being coupled through a computer network; associating, in accordance with the communication, a data collector module based on an object-oriented structure with a hardware device of the plurality of hardware devices through an SNMP module executing on at least one of the hardware device and another hardware device of the plurality of hardware devices coupled to the computer network; providing a capability to collect a definition of at least one unique object associated with each hardware device of the plurality of hardware devices in a management information database (MIB) associated therewith; invoking, through the SNMP module, the data collector module to collect instances of the at least one unique object associated with the hardware device based on an object identifier thereof, the instances residing at leaf nodes of a tree data structure of the MIB and the at least one unique object residing at a root node of the tree data structure; caching the instances of the at least one unique object associated with the hardware device through the data collector module; and dispensing with a need to modify instructions associated with the SNMP module in accordance with a modification in the MIB associated with the hardware device through the collection of the definition of the at least one unique object in the MIB and the caching of the instances thereof; wherein the at least one unique object associated with each hardware device of the plurality of hardware devices in the MIB comprises a hardware, a configuration parameter or a performance statistics, which is directly related to a current operation of the device.