Patent ID: 7606894

Claim:
A method of determining which types of status information to extract from a monitored device by a monitoring device communicatively coupled to a network with a plurality of communication protocols, comprising: selecting, with the monitoring device, a communication protocol among the plurality of communication protocols used to extract status information from the monitored device; retrieving, with the monitoring device from a first memory, an information associated with the selected communication protocol, wherein the information associated with the selected communication protocol includes at least a type of status information, a weight of the status information, and information for extracting the type of status information from the monitored device using the selected communication protocol, wherein the weight of the status information indicates a relative informative value of the status information with respect to status information of a same type extracted using another of the plurality of communication protocols; determining, with the monitoring device, if the type of status information is present in a second memory, wherein the second memory comprises status information previously extracted from the monitored device through a second protocol; if the determining step determines that the type of status information is present in the second memory, checking, with the monitoring device, whether the weight of the status information stored in the information associated with the selected communication protocol is greater than a corresponding weight associated with the status information of the same type stored in the second memory; if (1) the determining step determines that the type of status information is not present in the second memory, or (2) if the determining step determines that the type of status information is present in the second memory, but the checking step determines that the weight of the status information is greater than the corresponding weight associated with the status information of the same type stored in the second memory, accessing, with the monitoring device, the monitored device using the selected communication protocol and the information for extracting to obtain the status information.