Patent ID: 7086086

Claim:
A network discovery system for discovering nodes and for configuring or monitoring security policies on multi-vendor routers, firewalls (personal and corporate), intrusion detection systems, anti-virus, certificate authorities, RADIUS, LDAP servers and other security endpoints, in a distributed network of computers comprising: a distributed automaton running on the network comprising M agents for servicing N number of simultaneous cryptographic sessions such that bandwidth and number of sessions are scalable by the M agents and latency is potentially reducible to zero; one or more discovering agents or other devices communicating with the M agents for reading address resolution protocol (ARP) information from nodes or from gateways/routers over the network and for reporting said ARP or other feedback information back to a main server; and a main server responsive to ARP or other feedback information communicated from the discovering agents and for directing the discovering agents to invoke security policy deployment, enforcement, device quarantine, or data gathering at a selected node, such that portions of the bandwidth are equally divided among the M agents for processing, and the agents combine the processing power of all computers connected to the system to service the configuring and monitoring of security policies.