Hosted searching of private local area network information with support for add-on application

A computer implemented method for hosted searching of private local area network (LAN) information, comprising:

• crawling a private LAN having a plurality of devices to collect, from the plurality of devices, information of a first plurality of items of interest;
• reporting the collected information;
• receiving a report on the private LAN being crawled at a hosted demand search system;
• maintaining a private database for the private LAN based on the received report, wherein the private database includes the information collected from the private LAN organized by the first plurality of items of interest;
• receiving a request to access the collected information stored in the private database from an add-on application;
• and
• providing the accessed information to the add-on application;
• wherein the information of a first plurality of items of interest is obtained from the group consisting of a routing table of a router, a router configuration file of a router, an address resolution protocol (ARP) table of a switch, a bridging table of a switch, a switch configuration table of a switch, a software configuration file of a server, a resource utilization counter of a server, a log file of a server, custom application file of a server, user information of a directory server, group information of a directory server, a software configuration file of a workstation, a registry of a workstation, an operating system interface database of a workstation, a directory of a workstation, a resource utilization counter of a workstation, a log file of a workstation, and a configuration file of a network printer.

A computer implemented method for hosted searching of private local area network (LAN) information, comprising:

• crawling a private LAN having a plurality of devices to collect, from the plurality of devices, information of a first plurality of items of interest;
• reporting the collected information;
• receiving a report on the private LAN being crawled at a hosted demand search system;
• maintaining a private database for the private LAN based on the received report, wherein the private database includes the information collected from the private LAN organized by the first plurality of items of interest;
• receiving a request to access the collected information stored in the private database from an add-on application;
• providing the accessed information to the add-on application;
• receiving at the hosted on-demand search system a first request to display a user interface, which permits a user on the private LAN to search the private database, with an application rendered component;
• sending a second request to the add-on application to generate the application rendered component;
• receiving from the add-on application a third request to perform a private search for the information of the first plurality of items of interest in the private database;
• authorizing the private search using a configuration database;
• sending results of the private search to the add-on application;
• generating the application rendered component to represent the results of the private search;
• generating a page for the user interface that includes the application rendered component that represents the search results of the private search;
• and
• sending the generated page, including the application rendered component, to the user interface to be displayed.