Intelligent discovery of network information from multiple information gathering agents
First Claim
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1. 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.
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Abstract
A system, method and computer program product for intelligent discovery of network information from multiple information gathering agents adapted to discover information concerning the network. The discovery agents each have an associated discovery capability. Based on consideration of the agent discovery capabilities, discovery assignments are computed and network discovery is performed according to the assignments so as to reduce discovery poll overhead.
58 Citations
16 Claims
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1. A network management system for discovering information about a network, comprising:
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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. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A network management system for discovering information about a network, comprising:
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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; said agent discovery assignments being based on an input listing of said discovery agents, the network devices they are capable of discovering and a cost to discover each network device, and an output listing of said discovery agents and the network devices said discovery agents are assigned to discover; and said agent discovery assignments being further based on an entity-sorting computation that produces an entity-sorting listing that associates each network device and one or more discovery agents each having a cost to discover that network device, said listing ordering said network devices according to the discovery costs of the associated discovery agents. - View Dependent Claims (16)
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Specification