Patent ID: 7600012

Claim:
A configuration management system for use in a peer-to-peer (P2P) Network comprising: the P2P network supporting a plurality of different communication protocols; a plurality of consumer electronics (CE) devices in the P2P network, each CE device having at least one available operation and each CE device supporting at least one of the plurality of different communication protocols for receiving input and/or sending output; a P2P presence module that identifies the presence of CE devices in the P2P network and that identifies the communication protocols supported by the CE devices present in the P2P network; a P2P search module that identifies the available operations of each CE device in the P2P network; a CE device data structure corresponding to each CE device in the P2P network, each CE device data structure including a) a type of CE device; b) the presence of the CE device in the P2P network; c) the at least one available operation of the CE device; and d) the at least one communication protocol supported by the CE device; a plurality of supported function data structures, each supported function data structure including: a) a supported function type; and b) a list of operations used to perform the supported function; a configuration management module that receives a target function and determines a set of operations to perform the target function based on the supported function data structures; and the configuration management module generating a mapping of CE devices for performing the target function based on the set of operations to perform the target function and the plurality of CE device data structures, wherein the mapping links a group of CE devices to perform the target function based on the at least one communication protocol of each CE device in the group of CE devices to perform the target function.