Patent ID: 8139497

Claim:
A method in a data processing system for selectively updating information pertaining to computer devices in a group of said computer devices connectible to a specified transmission network, wherein each device is disposed to transmit packets to a router in a set of routers included in said network and each packet contains an element uniquely identifying its transmitting computer device, said method comprising the steps of: maintaining an inventory that includes information identifying at least some of said computer devices as assets of an entity associated with said specified network; acquiring data contained in one or more ARP caches at selected intervals, wherein each of said ARP caches is associated with one of said routers to form router caches, and the data is copied from the router caches to the data processing system; processing said acquired cache data to detect all of said elements contained therein that respectively identify said computer devices; constructing a database from said acquired data that includes said detected identifying elements, and further includes information indicating prior use of each computer device identified by said detected identifying elements, wherein the prior usage includes an indicator of a number of packets sent by at least some of the computer devices during a specified period of time; and comparing information contained in said database with information contained in said inventory, and selectively using results of said comparison to update said inventory.