US 6,456,306 B1 · Method and apparatus for displaying health status of network devices

Abstract

A method and apparatus for concurrently displaying from a single window on a network management station the health status of all network devices and objects of a computer network. The network devices may be categorized according to state or device type, as determined by the network manager. The method and apparatus provides a network manager with the ability to determine the current state of network devices and objects within an enterprise network and invoke further actions such as configuration, performance, fault, and security management tasks. The network manager can drag and drop icons from one network management system application window to another network management system application window to obtain fault information about network devices and objects, thus allowing multiple network management system applications to run concurrently on the same network management station. The network manager is further able to add new network devices and objects by dragging site, folder or device icons from one network management system application window to a second network management system application window for displaying the health status of the new devices. The dragged-in devices are added to the appropriate status panes within the second window according to the method of the present invention.

Claims27

Dependent claims

A network management station comprising:

a processor to process information and create multiple types of network device icons that represent at least two different network devices;
and
a display device communicatively coupled to the processor, the display device to display a window featuring (i) a plurality of health status panes each associated with a unique severity level of health status and (ii) the multiple types of network device icons, each network device icon being displayed in one of the plurality of health status panes according to a health status of its corresponding network device, wherein the health status of a selected network device of the at least two different network devices is determined by the processor calculating a plurality of vectors of severity levels of the selected network device, the vectors of severity levels are based on health status values for a plurality of fault categories received from the selected network device.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method and apparatus for displaying health status of network devices

Life of this patent

Method and apparatus for displaying health status of network devices

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims27