Patent ID: 7506048

Claim:
A method of monitoring, by a monitoring system, a monitored device among distinct devices communicatively coupled to a network, the method comprising: determining a plurality of identifiers, each identifier identifying a different device based on a manufacturer name and a model name; storing, in a digital repository accessible by the monitoring system, in association with each of the plurality of identifiers, (1) a keystring, and (2) an offset position relative to the keystring associated with a desired parameter representing a state of the corresponding device, wherein the keystring and the offset position vary and are modifiable based on at least one of the manufacturer name and the model name of the corresponding device; accessing, by the monitoring system, the monitored device using HTTP; receiving, by the monitoring system, information of the state of the monitored device directly from the accessed device in a browser language format, the information of the state of the monitored device including tag-based strings obtained from the monitored device; accessing the digital repository to obtain the keystring and the offset position corresponding to the desired parameter for the monitored device; parsing, by the monitoring system, the received tag-based strings to extract the desired parameter using the stored keystring and offset position associated with the desired parameter, wherein the parsing includes searching for the stored keystring within the tag-based strings; and storing, by the monitoring system, the extracted parameter in the digital repository accessible by the monitoring system.