Patent ID: 7506041

Claim:
A system comprising: a workstation communicatively coupled to a network; and a switch managed appliance communicatively coupled to the network to couple the workstation to a selected one of plural devices connected to the switch managed appliance so the workstation can control processing by the selected one of the plural devices; wherein the workstation operatively initiates a management session with the managed appliance by (A) establishing a secure sockets layer connection on a predefined Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port number with the managed appliance and then issuing a login request to the managed appliance and (B) the switch managed appliance authenticates the workstation based on the login request, and wherein the workstation uses the established secure sockets layer connection on the predefined TCP port number and only the established secure sockets layer connection to execute Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) commands to the switch managed appliance to control the switch managed appliance using a secure sockets layer communication protocol and the switch managed appliance responds to the SNMP commands only if the switch managed appliance first authenticates the workstation based on the login input identifier.