Patent ID: 7756958

Claim:
A network management system for discovering information about a network, comprising: a plurality of processing nodes; plural discovery agents on said nodes adapted to discover information concerning said network; each of said discovery agents having an associated discovery capability; each of said discovery agents having an associated discovery assignment computed prior to discovery; collectively, said agent discovery assignments being a subset of said agent discovery capabilities; said agent discovery capabilities being overlapping due to some of said agents being capable of discovering the same information from the same network device, and said discovery assignments being non-overlapping, such that (1) no network device is discovered more than once by different discovery agents seeking the same information, (2) one or more agents are not permitted to perform full discovery of information due to one or more other discovery agents being assigned to discover the same information, and (3) no duplicate discovery information is generated; and said system being configured to handle failover conditions wherein said discovery agents are no longer able to gather all information required by said discovery assignments, such that there is missing discovery information, said failover conditions being handled by consulting the discovery capabilities of other discovery agents to identify discovery agents that are capable of discovering said missing information.