Patent ID: 8601460

Claim:
A processor implemented firmware cloning method, comprising: providing a communications network connecting two or more networked devices; presenting a graphical representation of the communications network environment to a user on a graphical user interface, the graphical representation of the communications network environment including an indication of which version of a firmware package is operable on each networked device component in the communications network; receiving an input from the user using the graphical user interface that is indicative of a selection of a first networked device presented in the graphical representation of the communications network, the first networked device controlled by a terminal device and administered by a system administrator, and having a particular version of the firmware package operable on the first networked device, the input by the user operative execute a cloning utility in a firmware package of the first networked device and a second networked device; locating, without using a web browser, a firmware package that has been manually configured and optimized for the network and stored in a memory of the first networked device using the cloning utility executing on the first networked device, wherein the firmware package is presently operative to at least partially control the first networked device; cloning the located firmware package to a non-volatile memory of the second networked device using the cloning utilities executing on the first networked device and the second networked device; executing the cloned firmware package in the second networked device, such that the second networked device now contains and operates with a clone of the firmware package that is presently operative to at least partially control the first networked device; and indicating via a graphical user interface an optimized network device executing the manually configured firmware package that has been optimized for the network and providing a unique identifier for the optimized network device so that its firmware package can be cloned.