Patent ID: 7664886

Claim:
A method of extracting information related to a monitored device communicatively coupled to a monitoring device through a network using a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), comprising: accessing, with the monitoring device, the monitored device using the SNMP to obtain first information from the monitored device; determining, with the monitoring device, whether vendor information, can be extracted from the obtained first information; when the vendor information can be extracted from the first information, extracting, with the monitoring device, the vendor information from the first information and storing the vendor information in a storage device; and when the vendor information cannot be extracted from the first information, accessing, with the monitoring device, the monitored device using the SNMP to obtain second information, different from the first information, from the monitored device; determining, with the monitoring device, whether the vendor information can be extracted from the second information; and when the vendor information can be extracted from the second information, extracting, with the monitoring device, the vendor information from the second information and storing the vendor information in the storage device.