Patent ID: 8095648

Claim:
A system for collecting information from a plurality of network devices, comprising: a collector manager module, at least partially implemented in hardware, that interfaces with a plurality of collectors that are configured to collect information, using a plurality of respective network protocols, from the plurality of network devices, each of the plurality of collectors being configured to collect data based on a respective meta-meta model that specifies the respective network protocol to be used by that collector and the collected information is stored in a database, the plurality of collectors including a plurality of entity collectors and a plurality of attribute collectors, each of the plurality of collectors being either an entity collector or an attribute collector, the plurality of entity collectors being configured to collect a first level of information from the plurality of network devices that identifies a plurality of types of the plurality of respective network devices and the plurality of attribute collectors being configured to collect a second level of information from the plurality of network devices that describes one or more attributes including an IP address of each of the plurality of network devices, at least one attribute collector of the plurality of attribute collectors being configured to use a credential map to verify proper credentials before data collection starts for a thread.