Remote discovery and system architecture

Abstract

Sending a discovery agent to a computing device determines the services provided by that first computing device. As a result, a first set of information is received from the agent that provides information indicative of the services provided by the computing device. That information can then be compared to other information, either from the same computing device at a different point in time, or from a second computing device. The other information is indicative of services performed by that computing device at a different point in time or the second computing device. From that, services provided by the computing device that were previously different on the first computing device or that are not available on the second computing device can be determined.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.